Wall Street profits reached $45.9 billion in the first half of 2026, up 51.3 percent from the same period last year, according to a report from New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. The six-month total already passed New York City’s forecast of $45.3 billion for the whole year.
The report measures pretax profits at the broker-dealer operations of New York Stock Exchange member firms. There are 168 such firms, down from more than 200 before the global financial crisis in 2007. If the pace of the first half holds, the report says, full-year Wall Street profits could pass $90 billion in 2026.
That would beat the record set in 2025, when full-year profits totaled $65.1 billion, up 30.4 percent from $49.9 billion in 2024. The 2025 figure was an all-time record in dollar terms, although not when adjusted for inflation. The first half of 2026 alone came close to three quarters of that record total.
Wall Street profits pass the full-year forecast
New York City had projected a 30 percent fall in securities industry profits for 2026, to $45.3 billion. Wall Street profits cleared that figure by the end of June. The gap between the forecast and the result shows how far the first half ran ahead of what city planners had expected when they set their budget assumptions.
DiNapoli tied the result to three drivers. “Wall Street is having an exceptionally strong year, fueled by a boom in artificial intelligence spending, increased merger and acquisition activity, and elevated trading volumes amid market volatility,” he said. Each of those drivers fed a different part of the industry’s revenue, from deal fees to trading income.
Industry jobs reached a record high in 2026, the report says. DiNapoli also expects the 2026 bonus pool to increase, against the city’s projection of a 20 percent decline. He will release the office’s 2026 bonus estimates in March 2027, based on tax withholding data.
The 2025 bonus pool totaled $49.2 billion, equal to an average bonus of $246,900 per employee, up 6 percent from the previous year. Firms increased compensation spending by 18.8 percent during the first half of 2026 as profits climbed.
Where Wall Street profits came from
Trading revenue grew 1.8 percent to $40.3 billion in the first half, compared with the same period in 2025. Underwriting revenue, which covers stock offerings and bond sales, jumped 68 percent year over year, the fastest-growing segment in the report. Global mergers and acquisitions hit a record for any half-year period, and equity issuance rose to its highest level since 2021.
The first half of 2025, the comparison period, produced $30.4 billion in profits. The $15.5 billion increase in Wall Street profits to $45.9 billion came even though trading revenue grew only modestly. Deal work did much of the heavy lifting, as companies returned to the market for mergers, stock sales and bond issues after a quieter stretch.
The report also flags risks that could slow the second half. Those include ongoing global conflicts, high inflation and rising interest rates, the outsized contribution of the artificial intelligence sector, and the deregulatory push of the current administration. A second half that looks different from the first would leave Wall Street profits well short of the $90 billion pace.
What Wall Street profits mean for tax revenue
The industry generated an estimated $26.3 billion in tax revenue for New York State in state fiscal year 2025-26, up 28.5 percent from the previous year. That sum represents 20.8 percent of all state tax collections. For New York City, the industry generated an estimated $7.8 billion in city fiscal year 2026, up 15.8 percent, representing 9.2 percent of the city’s total tax collections.
DiNapoli said strong Wall Street profits should continue to provide an important boost to state and city revenue. The size of that boost matters because both budgets lean heavily on the industry. One dollar in five collected by the state came from securities firms and their workers in the last fiscal year, and nearly one dollar in ten collected by the city did the same.
The average annual salary in New York City’s securities industry, including bonuses, reached $561,770 in 2025. Bonuses accounted for about 43 percent of securities industry wages in the city, the comptroller estimated.
The securities industry accounted for 18.8 percent of New York City’s gross city product in 2024, the most recent year for which that figure is available. The comptroller’s report was released on October 6, 2026, and its Wall Street profits figures cover the broker-dealer operations of the 168 member firms of the New York Stock Exchange.