GOLDMAN SACHS, which relies on trading for more than half its revenue, posted losses from that business on six days in the second quarter, down from 15 days in the same period last year.
The firm’s traders made more than $100 million on four of the 63 days in the quarter ended June 30th, compared with one day in the year-earlier period, the New York-based company said.
Goldman Sachs is the fifth-biggest US bank by assets and last month reported its lowest first-half revenue since 2005 as revenue from trading stocks, bonds and other securities dropped 6 per cent from a year earlier.
That followed a 21 per cent decline in trading revenue for all of 2011, the worst performance since 2008.
Trading losses during the second quarter never exceeded Goldman Sachs’s value-at-risk limit, a measure of how much the company estimates it could lose in the securities markets in a single day, according to the filing.
Average daily value-at-risk dropped to $92 million in the three months ended June 30th from $95 million in the prior three months, the firm said on July 17th. – (Bloomberg)
