Who deserves the biggest bonuses after 2026? Probably not you
2026 still has a few weeks to go, but there are some things clearly shaping up. Revenues are up pretty comfortably across the board. Banks are cutting headcount, mostly due to AI. Those two things should have a pretty clear conclusion: less people and more money means bigger bonuses.
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Reality is more complex. Data from market intelligence provider Tricumen suggests that some groups of people did very well – but many were simply flat. Mostly.
The best performing product groups, and by implication the ones who can expect the biggest bonuses at the end of the year, are people who work in equities sales & trading. Tricumen found that the average front-office professional working in equities generated $4.2m in operating revenue in the first nine months of 2026, up by 31% on the $3.2m they had generated on average in the same period of 2025.
Equities professionals were strong all around (all were generating substantially more revenue) but by far the biggest increases came from those in prime services – those who work with hedge funds. Prime services professionals earned 38% more revenue per head in the first nine months of 2026 than they did in the same period of 2025, and this was a significant increase on how much they earned in 2024, too.
Also doing well were some bankers. Debt capital markets (DCM) bankers were mostly flat from a revenue-generating point of view, but their siblings in equity capital markets (ECM) and M&A were doing well – the former 38% up YoY, and the latter 25% up YoY.
Broadly speaking, professionals in fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) were doing worst. Currency and rates traders were flat on 2025, and credit traders barely above. Only commodities traders were up substantially (by around 9%), but given the strong performance of the sector – and how in demand they are with employers – it’s rather disappointing.
Forecasting the rest of the year is, of course, difficult. The overwhelming success of the Democratic party in the midterms – and their open hostility towards AI-related investment – will likely crimp bankers, at the very least, who had hundreds of billions in deals lined up.
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