...Difficult Conditions to Hit European GTUBs' 1Q16 Capital Market Earnings Fitch Ratings expects difficult conditions in equities, and fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) markets in the first few months of 2016 to hit sales and trading earnings. The Global Trading and Universal Banks (GTUBs) will be particularly affected by lower turnover in their large trading operations. We do not expect banks to report high position losses given their reduced appetite for traded market risk, but inventory values in less liquid instruments are likely to be down. Low capital markets earnings in the first quarter, which is usually the seasonally strongest quarter, mean that results for the full year are likely to be weak. We expect continued pressure on FICC sales and trading revenue, which for the GTUBs has declined for three consecutive years to USD70bn from a peak of USD91bn in 2012. Equities sales and trading revenue has been much more resilient, increasing to USD49bn in 2015 from USD41bn...
