Banks make money off fees for trading and loans (and complicated products that end up being a mix of the two). The recommendation business is mostly a marketing

Banks make money off fees for trading and loans (and complicated products that end up being a mix of the two). The recommendation business is mostly a marketing effort to drum up business. Their clients will be split roughly 50:50 on views on oil going or down. They don’t care. For every client losing money, another makes money too and has more money to spend on trading fees. Banks used to be allowed to trade on their own accounts, but that was a massive invitation for abuse. This got at least massively scaled down, if not outright banned. Sometimes investment banks do find themselves with an exposure they have to actively hedge; maybe they sold some complex product and it backfired on them, etc. But that’s rarer and a lot harder to game.