YouTube's Finance Creators Are Screaming One Thing: Big Bank Earnings Are Real, S&P Returns Aren't
A week of YouTube finance content distilled: banks are crushing it, the S&P has a hangover coming, and Robinhood just got a massive SEC gift

Ticker Ratings
| Ticker | Rating | Entry Price | Current | $ Gain | % Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BAC BANK OF AMERICA CORP /DE/ | buy | $54.26 | — | — | — |
| MS MORGAN STANLEY | buy | $191.72 | — | — | — |
| AVGO Broadcom Inc. | buy | $392.85 | — | — | — |
| HOOD Robinhood Markets, Inc. | buy | $87.07 | — | — | — |
| META Meta Platforms, Inc. | buy | $674.28 | — | — | — |
| AEO AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS INC | hold | $19.03 | — | — | — |
| REXR Rexford Industrial Realty, Inc. | hold | $35.57 | — | — | — |
Let's start with the good news: $BAC just posted EPS up 25% year-over-year — the highest quarterly EPS in nearly two decades — with equities trading up 30% and investment banking revenue up 21%. Morgan Stanley ($MS) had its own record quarter, with equity trading revenue hitting $5.15 billion vs. estimates of $4.78B, prompting Evercore to call it 'a category of one.' Cramer screened the whole S&P 500 and found only 17 stocks worth buying right now. Big banks are on that list.
Meanwhile, Seeking Alpha's YouTube crew is playing buzzkill at the party: the S&P 500's long-run average is ~7%, and price gains have been lapping earnings growth for years. Mean reversion, baby. Barry Ritholtz also hopped on to remind everyone that the dollar is a medium of exchange, not a piggy bank — and anything under a 15-year horizon is just a fancy trade.
$HOOD is the surprise winner of the week after the SEC killed the $25,000 pattern day trader rule, with Bernstein slapping a $130 price target on it — implying 65%+ upside. Meanwhile $SNAP cut 16% of its workforce and somehow went up 7%. Wall Street is a strange place. $AVGO's Meta AI chip partnership extension through 2029 has analysts calling it the top large-cap holding in the space — and with Meta spending up to $135 billion in capex, Broadcom's dance card is very much full.