Mike Santomassimo: Yeah. Look, I think you got to really dig into the underlying dynamics of what’s happening in the portfolio, right? We’re in the middle of a refresh of our product set. We’re seeing faster growth in new accounts and new balances coming on than maybe other players, just given the investments we’ve been making now for the better part of three years. And so that — with that comes some maturation of kind of the new vintages. At some point, that should peak and you’ll start to see sort of the normal behavior. But I’d just come back to, we spend a lot of time looking at each of the underlying vintages here. Everything is performing pretty much — very much on top of what we would have expected or, in a couple of cases, maybe slightly better.
And the quality of the new accounts we’re putting on are — the credit quality of them looks very good and continues to be the case. So I would just say that we’re in that normal phase of maturation. And as it sort of peaks, we’ll sort of let you know when we sort of feel like we’re there, but it should be coming over the coming quarters.
Gerard Cassidy: Great. Thank you.
Operator: And the next question will come from Dave Rochester of Compass Point Research. Your line is open, sir.
Dave Rochester: Hey, good morning, guys. Appreciate all the color on the NII and loan trend outlook. I was just wondering on the loan side, if you’ve noted any sensitivity at all in activity levels in general amongst your commercial customers to Presidential elections in the past. And how big of a headwind, if any, you think that could be this year?
Mike Santomassimo: Yeah. I mean, that’s hard. I think certainly, it will be a factor that people incorporate into their thinking of how aggressive or not they want to be and investments they’re making. But at this point, that would be really hard to kind of prove out with any sort of empirical data. I think at this point, what we’re seeing most is related to the overall sort of macroeconomic environment we’re in with such high rates and people having some uncertainty just generally around where things go from here. So, but I’m sure that will factor in at least to a small degree at some point as we go through the year.
Dave Rochester: Yeah. Okay, appreciate that. And then just on the trading line, Matt had mentioned the momentum you’ve seen earlier. You obviously had a great year in trading last year. You had your strongest quarter yet this year. And you’ve talked about making a lot of investments in the business in recent years. You’re still making those now. It seems like you have a lot of momentum in this area where you could grow that this year as well despite having a huge year last year. Just wanted to get your take on all that.
Mike Santomassimo: Well, the environment is going to matter a lot. And so we’ve certainly been helped by some of the volatility that we’ve seen over the last four, five quarters. And so that could change the outcome quite materially for all of us in the industry and the trading line. So keep that in mind. But as you said, we’re continuing to make — systematically make some investments there, and we feel good about that. And I think we continue to see some good performance from a market share point of view across those places we’ve been making the investments. But as Charlie also noted, we’re somewhat constrained in some of those businesses. But we feel good about the progress that the team has made over the last couple of years.
Dave Rochester: All right. Great. Thanks.
Operator: And our final question for today will come from Vivek Juneja of JPMorgan. Your line is open, sir.
Vivek Juneja: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Couple of questions. Firstly, financial advisors. Can you give some color on what those numbers have been doing over the past year, past quarter since that’s not disclosed anymore? Are you building? What types of advisors? Is that new recruits from college? Any color, Mike?
Mike Santomassimo: Yeah, sure. So as you pointed out, over the last — if you go back a couple of years ago, and you definitely saw some declines that we were seeing in the advisor workforce. But Barry Sommers and team have been working really hard to sort of not only stem some of the attrition but also begin to really ramp up the recruiting again. And I think we’re starting to see some of that come through. And so a lot of that — we’re back to like more normal, maybe slightly below normal attrition levels across the business, which is good. And we’re feeling very good about our ability to recruit high-quality advisors. And so I think that trend you saw a couple of years ago was definitely different. And we’ll continue to stay at it. We’re mostly focused on experienced advisors, a little less on, as you mentioned, college recruits and that type of thing.
Charlie Scharf: Yes, the only thing I’d — listen, Vivek, this is — I mean, we’re recruiting — I mean, it’s across — there’s no one prototype here. We are — we’ve recruited some of the biggest teams in the country that have traded over the last year and half. And these are people that wouldn’t have come to Wells Fargo before that because of the issues. And it was competitive and they chose to come here because of our capabilities, not because of what we’re willing to pay them. At the same side, we’re staffing up in our bank branches and those are more entry-level people. People come out of the banker workforce. And it’s going to be across the board. But there’s no doubt that the trajectory we have with our FA population is very different today than several years ago.
Vivek Juneja: Okay, that’s helpful. A completely different question. I want to go back to NII, not to beat a dead horse. But given that higher rates — I mean, sorry, less rate cuts are better for you, if we — so that should help NII now. But if we see rate cuts and eventually in ’25, does that mean that the troughing of NII could get pushed further back?
Mike Santomassimo: Yeah. I mean, look, we’ll see, Vivek, where it exactly troughs. Obviously, sort of the exact pace of rate cuts is part of the equation, but we also have to look at sort of the broader trends that we’ve talked about throughout the call, right? And how do depositors sort of react? Where does the mix shift stabilize? And how do — what do we see from a competitive environment? So all of that matters as you sort of look at where exactly it’s going to trough.
Vivek Juneja: Thanks.
John Campbell: All right. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate it. We’ll talk to you next quarter.
Operator: Thank you, all, for your participation on today’s conference call. At this time, all parties may disconnect.
