Bank of America profits from strong financial markets

It appears that one of the world’s largest banks is heading back to profitability after a long stretch of quarterly losses. This past week Bank of America reported that they had a quarterly profit of around $2.8 billion. This was a huge turnaround for the company that had three consecutive quarters of losses. In the previous quarter, Bank of America had a net loss of $194 million.

The company has claimed that much of the gain is due to the improving financial markets across the world. The markets world wide have seen positive returns for the first time in a couple years and the average investor’s mood and opinion of the stock market appears to be changing for the better.

According to the bank’s chief executive, Brian Moyniha, the worst of the credit crisis appear to be behind us. Because of this, the bank has felt comfortabel lowering their provision for bad debt loss from $13.4 billion down to $9.8 billion.

The most successful aspects of Bank of America appear to be their brokerage company, Merril Lynch, and Bank of America’s commercial banking department. Both of these sectors of the company saw dramatic upward swings in their profitability this past quarter.