And the higher end part of that base, in a broad consumer base, they’re actually below the pandemic by about 20%. And that’s because they moved the money into the market. And you can see that in some of the preferred category of pricing. So where people think about checking and money markets and this, we think, I always have thought about it a little more straightforward, which is transactional cash and investment cash. The investment cash has largely been re-suited across the businesses. The transactional cash holds because it’s money in motion moving every day. And for our Consumer business, that’s represented by the $0.5 trillion of checking account balance, as you can see on the page, with some modest amounts in money markets and stuff that are carried as the cushion people have.
And if they’ve moved the money to market, they’ve moved it. And so we’re watching Consumer because there’s a little more drifting there, and it’s up $250 billion since pre-pandemic. And you’re saying you have the dynamics of loans, student loan repayment starting, that’s a million of our customers pay student loans. You have the dynamics of interest rate impacts on cash carry of loan balance if that’s higher. And that’ll sort out, but just takes a lot longer. That’s across 37 million people. So it’s a — the impact takes a while to sort through. And so we feel good about it. But I think people look by category in this and that. You have to think about more how a customer, which a business or consumer, behaves. And what we’ve seen them is adjust their behavior based on their household circumstances, and largely through the system, and most of it coming a little bit slower in consumer, just because natural question is there, if there are a lot of stimulus went in those accounts, what do I do with it over time?
And now they’re doing something.
Manan Gosalia: Got it. That’s helpful detail. So I guess just in terms of deposit growth from here, would you still prefer to grow deposits in line with loans? Or is there a little bit more room for that to come down?
Brian Moynihan: We prefer to grow deposits in line with customer growth and activity. So in the last four quarters, Consumer I think were up another 900,000. Net new checking accounts, which average balance is around $11,000, they come in lower than that and mature after that. We grow — we have a transactional banking business for all types of customers and we grow irrespective of it. That produces $2 trillion. You have a loan business to customers, that produces $1 trillion, and that difference then is a wonderful thing to have every day.
Manan Gosalia: I appreciate it. Thank you.
Operator: We’ll take our next question from Chris Kotowski with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Chris Kotowski: Yeah. Good morning. Thanks. I’ve been looking at your average balance sheet on Page 8 of the supplement, and I noticed that in this quarter, your overall yield on earning assets was up 20 basis points, and lo and behold, the yield on interest-bearing liabilities was also up 20 basis points. And I’m curious, was there some benefit unusual, the lower amortization or something like that? Or is it just a function of that — behind all the moving parts of balances better than you thought?
Alastair Borthwick: Well, I don’t think it was an amortization issue. I think it was just the — way the entire balance sheet works across assets, liabilities, when you think about all the various moving pieces. So I don’t think there’s anything particularly notable there.
Chris Kotowski: Okay. No, it’s just stunning with all the moving pieces how the earning asset yield and the liability yields really moved in tandem. All right, that’s it for me. Thank you.
Operator: For our final question today, we have a follow-up from Vivek Juneja with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Vivek Juneja: Thanks. Brian, trading has grown nicely in equities. You’ve had — you said it was led by financing. Is there room in your balance sheet from a capital standpoint to keep growing that? And second question related to trading would be, in your guidance on NII for next year, what are you assuming for trading NII in there?
Brian Moynihan: Let me just hit the first one. Alastair can hit the second one. The capacity, if you think about the constraint on RWA, as you know, Vivek, and your experience in the business, that equity financing is not RWA intense. So — but it is asset size intense. Now, when you look at us with our supplemental leverage ratio, 100 plus basis points over the requirements, we have lots of room on the asset size if we want. And the return on equity — the return on the risk in that business is very strong. So Jim and the team have done a good job and [indiscernible] equities side. And we continue to experience that there’s plenty of room. And in fact, we have brought the balance sheet up by over $200 billion largely due to the financing side.
A lot of that due to equities, and we can continue to do that if the clients need the capabilities in the product. So that’s a simple answer. Yes, there’s a lot of capacity, and it’s largely driven by our huge capital base and our effect on all the size measures were way over the requirements. I think 100 basis points on that is probably almost $50 billion of overage, so you have a lot of room to go.
Alastair Borthwick: And then, Vivek, in terms of the NII guidance, we include Global Markets in there. So it’s just part of a big diversified portfolio. I think we would point to, Global Markets remains liability sensitive. You can see that in the way NII has come down in ’21 and ’22 and into ’23 with rates going up. So it will perform according to the rate curve. And then we may put a little bit of modest balance sheet growth in there, as Brian pointed out, just to continue investing in the business. But it’s in the NII guide, and it will follow the forward curve.
Vivek Juneja: Thank you.
Brian Moynihan: Well, thank you for joining us. Just in closing, I’ll go back to the key points. Strong earnings for the company. Earnings growth year-over-year for the three months and nine months in double digit. The returns of 15% return on tangible common equity are very strong. We have the capital to meet the new capital rules as proposed before any mitigation, before any changes in those rules. And we’re returning 15% on that capital today. So we feel good about the path ahead to the company. We continue to do it the old-fashioned way, growing our clients, growing our revenues from those clients and driving responsible growth. Thank you.
Operator: This does conclude today’s program. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.
