This week doesn’t just mark the release of a lot of economic data but also a data-flood from publicly-traded companies — in the form of second quarter earnings. On Tuesday, earnings season kicks off in earnest with a ‘bank-a-palooza:’ All five of the major money-center banks release their financial results before the opening bell on Wall Street. That’s JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), Citigroup (C), Goldman Sachs (GS), and Bank of America (BAC). Right now is an interesting moment: geopolitics and the global economy are unsettled. Oil prices and financial markets are volatile. But for the country’s biggest banks, this economy is driving revenue and profits higher, according to Lauren Cassidy, chief investment officer at the Founders 100 ETF in Dallas.“The drivers of each of the businesses happen to be strong at the same time,” Cassidy said. ”That usually doesn’t line up, but it has this quarter.”Let’s start with the capital markets.“That includes investment banking, financing, and very strong trading volumes, especially in equity,” said Gabriel Hack, an assistant vice president at Moody’s Ratings.Hack said that’s down to the soaring stock market — the mega-banks make money when investors buy and sell a lot.Meanwhile, there’s an ongoing IPO bonanza, generating hundreds of millions in investment banking fees, according to Cassidy.“So, we had SpaceX, the largest IPO in Wall Street history,” she said. “But we have Anthropic, Databricks, Anduril, and Open AI all coming next.”The banks are also lending for business expansion.“We’ve had the AI buildout — players that have very deep pockets issuing bonds, so a lot of revenue there,” Cassidy said.Not all these trends are a sure thing going forward, though, said Keith Buchanan, a senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments in Atlanta. “As fast as the spigot turned on for some of the capital expenditures related to the AI build-out, that spigot can turn off pretty quickly as well,” Buchanan said.On the consumer-facing side of the business — that’s lending — banks are making a lot of money from the high interest rates they can charge. But with inflation on the rise, Buchanan said more consumers could get in trouble. “We have seen a tick-up in delinquencies of credit cards and also auto loans,” he said. “That’s some of the first places you start to see stress. We’re seeing that concentrated in subprime borrowers.”Buchanan will be listening closely to see if banks report consumer credit problems are spreading up the income ladder.