Bank of America CEO Moynihan says consumer credit quality is good

The pattern in past cycles is that bank management language on credit runs ahead of the hard numbers: provisions, net charge-off rates and delinquency trends in the card and unsecured books are where reassurance gets tested, and 'good' commentary has on previous occasions coexisted with normalising loss rates from unusually low levels. The distinction worth drawing is between stable absolute credit performance and the direction of travel, since markets have tended to react to the rate of deterioration rather than the level. Bank of America skews heavily to the US consumer, so its read carries more weight on household balance sheets than commentary from capital-markets-heavy peers. The follow-ons are the charge-off and reserve build disclosures in the underlying filing, whether peer banks echo the same characterisation, and how the remarks sit against card delinquency data released elsewhere. As qualitative management commentary, the signal is confirmatory rather than new information.