When Goldman Sachs executives were asked about disappointing results in the firm’s fixed income division this week, they made it sound as though the trading environment was simply not in their favor.

Fixed income revenue fell 10% in the first quarter, coming in $910 million below analysts’ expectations, according to StreetAccount data. It was an unusually large miss for one of Goldman’s flagship Wall Street businesses.

“It was basically just a function of the overall environment making markets,” CFO Denis Coleman told an analyst on Monday after the bank’s earning report. “We remain actively engaged with clients, but our performance in rates and mortgages was relatively lower.”

But as nearly all of Goldman’s rivals, including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup, posted blockbuster results for first-quarter fixed income in the days that followed, one thing became clear to Wall Street: Goldman Sachs’ vaunted fixed income traders had underperformed.

JPMorgan saw fixed income trading revenue jump 21% to $7.1 billion, the bank’s second-biggest haul ever. Morgan Stanley, where fixed income is less a priority than equities, posted a 29% jump in the bond business. Citigroup saw bond trading revenue jump 13% to $5.2 billion.

Since before the 2008 financial crisis, when Lloyd Blankfein led Goldman Sachs, the firm’s fixed income division had been the envy of Wall Street. Goldman was known for its trading prowess, a reputation forged in periods of dislocation when its desks generated outsized gains. The bank’s identity as a trader’s firm — one expected to outperform in turbulent times — has endured in the decade-plus since.

That makes the first-quarter stumble particularly notable.

“It seems that something went wrong at Goldman in fixed income,” said veteran Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo, who called the bank’s results “worst-in-class.”

“I’d imagine that at Goldman, a fire is being lit under the traders, managers and risk overseers in FICC after such an underperformance,” Mayo said in an interview with CNBC, using an acronym standing for fixed income, currencies and commodities, the formal name for that business.

The prevailing theory is that Goldman was caught offsides on trades tied to interest rates in the first quarter, according to several market participants who asked for anonymity to speak candidly.

That’s because of the positioning that many Wall Street firms had at the start of this year, when markets were expecting the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates at least twice in 2026, these people said.

But after the price of oil surged with the advent of the Iran war, roiling expectations for inflation, the markets began pricing those cuts out, with some investors even bracing for the possibility of rate hikes this year.

Fixed income was the sole blemish on a quarter in which Goldman Sachs exceeded expectations handily, thanks to the firm’s equities traders and investment bankers. Despite the earnings beat, the firm’s shares dropped as much as about 4% on Monday following the report.  

Goldman Sachs declined to comment. But on Monday, CEO David Solomon sought to put the quarter’s performance into context:

“When I look at the scale and the diversity of the business, it’s performing very, very well,” Solomon said during the company’s conference call. “Some quarters, it’s going to be stronger here, stronger there.”

The global cruise industry is reporting record demand and renewed consumer enthusiasm, but the leaders helming the world’s largest cruise companies say the sector is also facing some of the most complex challenges it has seen in decades.

“We are not an alternative vacation anymore. We are a vacation,” Carnival Corporation CEO Josh Weinstein said during a keynote panel Tuesday at Seatrade Global, a cruise industry conference.

As demand rises, passengers are getting younger; one-third of cruise travelers are now under 40, according to the 2026 State of the Cruise Industry report released by Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). One-third of trips are multi-generational, often families traveling together. And nearly a third of cruisers take vacations by ship multiple times a year, according to the report.

The cruise industry hosted 37 million passengers worldwide last year and anticipates reaching 42 million annually by 2029, CLIA found.

“That mainstream demand sets us up very well for volatility,” Weinstein said.

Royal Caribbean Group CEO Jason Liberty said cruise lines are already investing hundreds of millions of dollars annually in technology and energy innovation, but availability of alternative fuels remains the bottleneck.

“It’s not about what we want to use,” Liberty said. “It’s about what’s scalable and available.” 

“We’re going to have heavy competition with other sectors for those fuels as well. There’s no guarantee we get them,” added Bud Darr, president and CEO of Cruise Lines International Association.

At Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, the challenge for new CEO John Chidsey is righting the ship.

In his first earnings call, just days after taking the helm, Chidsey acknowledged the company had committed numerous missteps.

Margins are under pressure. Shares have been volatile. Critics have questioned a push to expand cruise itineraries in the Caribbean before Norwegian’s private island was fully completed.

Earlier this year, Elliott Investment Management took an activist stake in Norwegian, which may have provided impetus for the board to make a leadership change.

Chidsey told CNBC Elliott’s goals align with his own and that he intends to create a culture of accountability and urgency where teams are working together rather than separated into silos.

The Seatrade conference was a cruise industry debut for Chidsey, formerly the CEO of Subway, Burger King and Avis.

When asked what a “sandwich guy knows about cruising,” Chidsey didn’t miss a beat, insisting he’s a “turnaround guy not a sandwich guy.”

“I knew nothing about fast food when I went there. I think having a fresh set of eyes is really what Norwegian needs. And it’s all about execution,” he said.