Bear Stearns seemed to confirm that all the worrying was justified. It missed estimates by a decent margin, driven by poor results in fixed income trading and a large writedown. There has been a lot of hand-wringing over whether Bear was having a tougher time weathering the subprime mess, which clearly have hit its bond operations. As for Goldman Sachs, it beat the revenue and earnings estimates yet again, albeit by a smaller margin than we're used to. Investment banking and principal investments remain strong. But the growth has slowed from the near impossible growth rates the firm threw up last year. So the early take may be that the industry remains strong but that there are finally signs that meteoric surge is finally starting to moderate. This has been the conventional wisdom for a while, and now it seems more justified.

For more:
- here's the Bear Stearns release
- here's the Goldman Sachs release