The Canary In The Coal Mine For Wall Street Trading Revenue Is Whimpering

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Yesterday boutique investment bank Jefferies reported a 17% year over year decline in its fixed income trading revenue with net revenues of $280 million. That's down from $336.9 million a year earlier.

Jefferies is small compared to the JP Morgan's of the world, but this loss is significant as the bank's earnings tend to foreshadow how the rest of Wall Street will do.

Take Q3 2013 for example, when Jefferies reported a year over year routing in fixed income - revenue was down 88%.

That same quarter Goldman Sachs took a 44% hit in that sector, and JP Morgan took a loss that quarter (though its fixed-income trading revenue was only down 8%).

Jefferies also added this little note about a $15 million hit to its revenue, just for your information:

Our holdings in Knight Capital and Harbinger Group Inc. were both marked down in the first quarter by $15 million in aggregate. The impact of the mark down is recorded as part of our estimated net revenues.

All of that said, it's possible that everything will be fine, and when JP Morgan kicks off Q1 earnings next month (April 11th) everything will be fine and dandy.

But this is definitely something to keep in mind.