JPMorgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America kicked off fourth quarter earnings season Friday, setting the tone for Wall Street.

NewEdge Wealth Senior Portfolio Manager Ben Emons told Yahoo Finance Live that Fridays results prove JPMorgan is an "incredible machine."

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: JP Morgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America kicking off earnings season this morning. JP Morgan coming out on top, at least for now, raking in a record $49 billion in net income. The stock, gaining just around 2% here at the open, have been up nearly 2 and 1/2%. That was the largest gain that we've seen in nearly a month.

So here with more on what these early results tell us about the rest of the earnings season and some of the movements that we could see in the broader market, we want to bring in Ben Emons. He is NewEdge Wealth senior portfolio manager. Ben, it's great to have you back here in studio. So let's talk about these results. Your takeaway from some of the strength that we saw from these banks and what that tells us then in terms of setting the tone for earnings season.

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BEN EMONS: Yeah, I think the FDIC charge was a bit of the, let's say, the headline dampener. But if you look into JP Morgan being such an incredible machine, particularly wealth management business now reaching like $3.4 trillion in assets. And the other banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman are obviously big in that area too. So I think that sets us up for earnings season for those, as in there trying to gain market share there. Probably good results there potentially on that front.

Whereas, with Bank of America and Wells Fargo, this morning there was some increase in charge offs on loans that are getting a bit sour here. So that's, I think, why those stocks were down and taking actually that hit from FDIC. It does come to roost ultimately, right?

The regional banking crisis may have subsided, but the banks-- the big banks have to pay for it. So I think also Morgan Stanley probably has some of that and Goldman next week. So I think it's a mixed to good picture, but it's not really the driver today though for the markets. Really energy, that's really about it.

BRAD SMITH: Does those loans running sour signal to you that the resiliency in household balance sheets, in some of the small business balance sheets might be coming to a close?

BEN EMONS: It could be, but I think it's still early days. Because it's amazing how the-- call it the Fed rate shock is not yet caught up with the economy in such a significant way. A different area of this just to highlight is private credit where there's interest-- there's a lot of money going into private credit and interest rate is very high.

And it's really the economy on the ground, right? As in you have small companies that use private credit lenders and there's no distress seen there. So I wonder if we're living with high rates and we're able to live with high rates, that that's really continues to be the environment that we're in, that these charge offs are just small impairments as opposed to a broadening distress cycle.