Guess whose trading desk lost $128m last quarter?

The bank said that the losses were sustained during the market turmoil of May and June, and were due to market conditions and not down to the failure of a single strategy or trade. The equity prop trading desk gave back some of the $511m profit that it made in the first quarter - so the team remains well up on the year.

Deutsche has been building its equity prop trading business over the last couple of years, in an effort to balance the strength it has in fixed income. It's revenues from equities sales & trading rose 23% in the second-quarter, to $950m, but the increase was lower than that posted by all of Wall Street's main securities firms. Bloomberg has quoted Ulf Moritzen from Nordinvest, who said that 'Deutsche Bank's proprietary trading is limping behind and remains a volatile business'.

The performance in equities, however, was more than offset by other units at Deutsche's investment banking division. Pre-tax profits came in up 32% at $1.5bn, and accounted for over two-thirds of Deutsche's total earnings in the period ($2.4bn).

Deutsche's share price dropped as much as 3% during trading Tuesday, but many are applauding the bank for disclosing the trading loss details. The Wall Street Journal quotes Jon Pearce, from Fox-Pitt Kelton, who said that 'visability is low in prop trading. Deutsche has given us a specific breakdown, and this goes beyond what other banks have done'. Other analysts say that they suspect that other firms posted equity trading losses in the second-quarter, but rolled up the data into the more general sales & trading figures.

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