This past week saw some decent earnings numbers from big companies, not the worst

inflation data we could get, and a continually resilient stock market. So why doesn't

this feel better than it looks? This is the markets, a new

series from the Goldman Sachs exchanges podcast.

Hi, I'm Sam Grobart. Joining us for our kickoff episode is Tony Pascarello from global banking and markets.

Tony and I are going to talk about all that uneasiness as well as China's GDP, European markets, and the tech sector.

Tony, thanks for joining us today.

I'm going to go right into these questions.

You recently wrote about how people you're speaking with

remain perplexed by what you called the bulletproof performance of the stock market

particularly in light of last month's concerns over regional banks.

Have the bank earnings you've seen these past few weeks changed that story at all?

I don't think that story has changed a lot. What we've

seen in bank earnings over the past few weeks, both from the regional banks and then the big banks,

I think it came mostly as a relief to the market. I don't mean to say it's

been uniformly good news, but issues like deposit flight and credit quality were

generally viewed as better than feared.

And so the market was rallying well in advance of these reports

and there was nothing in them to shoot against that rally.

One of the puzzling things about markets today

is how volatility has declined recently.

Why do you think that is?

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