“And then, also, as a reminder, the back half of the year, we have 1 more day in each of the quarters. So that adds a 9 basis point tailwind to NIM.”

In context

“going into the third quarter. Andrew Young: Thanks for the question, Sanjay. Yes, as you said, in the first quarter, we did have elevated cash levels from the Discover home loan sale at the end of 25, and then we had really strong deposit growth in Q1 that was aided by tax refunds. And at that point, we ended the quarter with around $75 billion of cash. And so in the second quarter, it came down quite a bit from growth and from the maturities that I had referenced in the Q1 call as well as the cash impact related to Brex, which all of those things drove the ending balance down $20 billion but average only came down about $5 billion. So as you suggest, looking ahead there should be a bit of a NIM catch-up that happens in the third quarter as the average cash catches up to the ending cash. And then, also, as a reminder, the back half of the year, we have 1 more day in each of the quarters. So that adds a 9 basis point tailwind to NIM. And so I will just pull up on all of those things, I would be remiss if I did not just highlight, you know, clearly, any significant changes in our balance sheet could impact NIM over time. And our NII is almost perfectly neutral to rates over time, but if and when the Fed moves, there could be an impact to NIM at least in the short term given the timing of the repricing of deposits and assets, but that effect should level itself out over time. So last quarter, I pointed you to the back half of last year as a pretty decent proxy for a NIM level after we closed on Discover. And so there will, of course, be quarterly variability from, you know, day count and other seasonal factors, but I continue to point you to that as a pretty good indicator of where our structural NIM is going to be like”