We’ll take our next question from Ebrahim Poonawala with Bank of America.Ebrahim Poonawala Hi, good morning. I guess two questions. One, David, you referred to the hyper volatility in the rates market, but would appreciate if you can address just fixed-income trading, what happened there this quarter. Clearly there was some lagged performance versus peers. To the extent you can, just give us a flavor of what happened and your expectations around how things evolve from here, how are clients’ macro funds holding up in face of this volatility.David Solomon Yes. So I appreciate the question. I mean, it’s been interesting — this morning just watching what I’d highlight is, I think we had a very solid quarter in FICC. We had nearly a $4 billion quarter.
And just to put that in perspective, I think that’s a top-decile quarter for that. I think we’ve had — I think it was the eighth best quarter on record. I think we’ve got 96 quarters. So it was a solid performance and just the headline number of $4 billion, the way we look at it, that’s a very solid FICC quarter.It was certainly a quarter there was volatility in client activity throughout the quarter, and I think we were well positioned to serve our clients and served our clients well. Now, some of the noise that I see just from the early morning release, our FICC business was down versus the first quarter of last year by 17%, but in the first quarter of last year, we had significant outperformance. If I remember correctly, our FICC revenues in the first quarter of last year were up year-over-year 21% when the competitor average was kind of flat or down.And you can go look at that from a base perspective.
We had much more significant outperformance in the first quarter of 2022 because of our commodities business and the breadth of our commodities business. So if you remember back in the first quarter of 2022, the war with Ukraine started, there was more volatility in commodities and clients were very active in commodities. And so it was an outsized quarter in commodities in the first quarter of 2022.But overall, I think FICC performance in the quarter was strong. We were there to serve our clients. And by any standards, it was a good quarter. I think given the environment that we’re operating in, I would expect activity to continue to be active with our clients. It’s certainly an uncertain period of time and there’s a lot of movement and positioning, and so we’re finding our clients active at the moment.Ebrahim Poonawala Got it.
Thanks for that. And then just separately, I guess, a big focus post Investor Day was picking up pace on asset sales. How does the environment over the last month influence that? Equity markets obviously held up pretty well ex the financials. So given the sense of just asset sale pace of that, how you’re thinking about that and any change today versus Investor Day and how does that translate into pace of buybacks maybe in the back half of the year?David Solomon Yes. So we commented in the script about the fact that we made more progress on the disposition of our historical principal investments, and we highlighted that we reduced them from just under $30 billion to just over $27 billion during the quarter. Then it’s also highlighted in the script that we feel on track to get to the $15 billion target number that we laid out over the course of the next 24 months.We feel good about that progress and we’re going to continue to move to reduce that to zero over time.
There are a lot of positions. There’s no question when there are market headwinds, some of that might go a little bit slower, but we’re on pace with what we’re trying to do and are committed to it. And obviously, we see a big change in that business as we grow management fees and we take the legacy investments out, the volatility in that business, we believe, will change meaningfully.Operator We’ll take our next question from Christian Bolu with Autonomous Research.Christian Bolu Good morning, David and Denis. Just to follow up on the question on the Markets business, March did feel like a very tough month for some of your institutional clients, particularly saw hedge fund closures, we are hearing of deleveraging. So how does that inform your view of the outlook for the trading businesses and your market share, particularly given, I guess, Goldman’s exposure to the hedge fund community?David Solomon So I appreciate that question.
We’re obviously very focused on share and our share gains. We do participate with the hedge fund community, but when you look at our big competitors, they participate very actively with the hedge fund community too. We also are very significant with the broad institutional community. As I said just in the previous question, our clients are active at the moment because there’s a lot going on. We’re very focused on our market share. As we said in our Investor Day, we laid out more metrics and more of a focus on continuing to look at where we can advance our position with the top 100 clients that we deal with in our markets business. We continue to be optimistic about our share position, our overall ability to serve our clients, and we do think in this environment, clients will continue to be active.Christian Bolu Great.
Thank you. And then maybe a question on capital return. Can you just clarify why you are slowing buybacks? Your capital ratio is seen very healthy to your point that the stock is attractive at this level. So not sure that I get it. And then any comments on your appetite for strategic acquisitions here? There’s been a lot of stress in the wealth management space, which is a space I know you guys are interested in. So curious here, if you’re conserving capital to go on the offense.Denis Coleman Sure. Christian, it’s Denis. Thank you for the question around capital. And obviously, in this case, appreciating the starting point in Q1, where we significantly increased the amount of buyback activity in Q1. We remain very committed to return of capital to shareholders, committed to sustainably growing our dividend, committing to the overall capital return profile, but we’re also observing opportunities to deploy into the franchise on behalf of clients.And there are elements of uncertainty in the overall macroeconomic environment.
And so our expectations is that buyback activity will be moderated, but we’ll monitor that over the course of the quarter. As you say, we do like the stock price and remain committed to return of capital to shareholders.Operator We’ll take our next question from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research.Steven Chubak Hi, good morning.David Solomon Good morning.Steven Chubak So I wanted to start off with a question on Platform Solutions. The business saw a step up in expense. I just wanted to understand how we should be thinking about the trajectory for expenses in the segment. And similarly, for provision going forward, just following this quarter’s significant reserve release, we know you had accrued reserves pretty conservatively for that segment, but the top line momentum’s good.
