But trading is only part of the banking business, and banks are only one part of the finance industry. Elsewhere, there is plenty of positive news. Fund managers are looking happier. Inflows into global equity funds reached $26 billion in the week ending September 18th, the highest figure in more than 20 years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The equity rally is now sufficiently established that investors have overcome their memories of the dark days of 2008. The party mood is such that analysts at Citigroup are forecasting London’s FTSE 100 to reach 8,000 by end-2014, a thousand points above the record high reached back in 1999.

A renewed enthusiasm for shares pushed global equity issuance to $540 billion in the first nine months of the year, according to Dealogic, a data provider. That is a 12% increase on the same period in 2012. The British government has managed to offload part of the stake it acquired in Lloyds Banking Group during the crisis.

Private-equity firms are selling off stakes in some of the companies acquired during the 2006-07 buy-out boom. More equity flotations are on the way, including Britain’s Royal Mail and America’s Twitter. That is good news for banks’ capital-markets desks.

Meanwhile, the bond markets are not as moribund as the slump in trading revenues might suggest. Total debt issuance may have been down in the first nine months of the year, but high-yield issuance reached a record $358 billion, according to Dealogic. That figure includes the largest-ever high-yield issue, from Sprint, an American telecoms group.

That deal was overshadowed by the $49 billion raised in a single day by another telecoms group, Verizon. Almost a third of the issue was in the form of 30-year bonds, an indication that there is plenty of appetite for long-dated corporate debt.

That Verizon’s debt was issued to help finance an acquisition—the purchase of a minority stake in the group’s wireless operations—has bankers salivating. “This deal will make chief executives reconsider what is possible,” says one senior financier. Bosses have been cautious about big bids in recent years but their animal spirits may now be awakened. Big mergers and acquisitions not only create income for investment banks through underwriting equity and bond issues but also generate large advisory fees.

It is not hard to see a virtuous circle developing, at least from the perspective of the markets. Retail investors will pour money into equities, driving share prices up; higher share prices will encourage more M&A; and M&A talk will push the stockmarket up even further.
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Perhaps the biggest cause for celebration in the finance sector is the revival in banks’ share prices. Bonuses these days are paid in shares as well as cash; the equity element is often locked in for years. So the slump in bank shares in 2008 and 2009 was doubly damaging to bankers: many lost both their jobs and a chunk of their wealth. The rally over the past 18 months (see chart) will cause them to get out the Porsche brochures once more.

Others will not be celebrating this news, of course. Having caused the crisis of 2008, the popular view is that Wall Street has prospered much more than Main Street from the recovery. But one of the banks’ main jobs is to raise money for companies. So when the capital-markets desks are busy, that is good news for the economy. Trading may be subdued, but trading is important only in so far as it creates liquidity, and liquidity is important only in so far as it encourages investors to provide capital for firms. The Verizon deal shows there is no problem there.

Residents of Main Street can also comfort themselves that the bankers are still far from happy. Just as farmers moan about the weather, gather a group of financiers in a room and pretty soon they will start grumbling about the regulators. There is no sign that this burden is going to dissipate any time soon.