Welcome to Industry Focus, the podcast that dives into a different sector of the stock market every day.

It's Monday, July 9th, and today we're talking big banks. That's right, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo.

We'll be diving into what investors need to know about how each of these banks

operate, what to watch for, and really how the banks

stack up valuation-wise.

And this is all ahead of earnings slated to begin later this week.

I'm your host Shannon Jones, and I'm joined via Skype by our

financial specialist slash guru Matt Frankel. Matt great to be in the studio with you

today. Always good to join you guys. Awesome, awesome.

So before we dive into the four big bank stocks, let's actually set the stage, Matt.

Let's talk about in a very broad sense how banks make money and why it's important to

understand this. Sure, well there's two kind of broad categories of how banks make

money. The first is commercial banking, which at its core is just kind of the savings and loan type bank of loaning out customers money, charging interest, and kind of making a profit from the cost of money to you and the cost

of money to the customer.

That's where commercial banks get their profit margins.

On the other hand you have things like what are known

as investment banks which deal with kind of mergers and acquisitions, they advise on IPOs and equity and debt underwriting,

and kind of also deal with the wealth management

side of the business.

So those are kind of two broad baskets

that you can put banks in. because these are the big four banks

They are by far the largest four banks in the US

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