JPMorgan — excess capital, and a lofty stock valuation Jamie Dimon

 

At more than $800 billion JPMorgan is now worth more than three of its largest competitors — Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo — combined.

For example, in breaking down possible losses from various risks in 2006, he wrote: 

“It’s important to share these numbers with you, not to worry you, but to be as transparent as possible about the potential impacts … We do not know exactly what will occur or when, but we do know that bad things happen.”

JPMorgan has roughly $60 billion of equity capital more than it needs to meet regulatory requirements. It is expected to spend about one-quarter of that on share buybacks  

Sounds great, but there’s a problem: Its shares are so highly valued that this is a bad trade for the bank. 

The current price is 2.4 times the book value per share – buying those shares for investors means paying them more than double the current net asset value of the company they own. 

“No one's going to convince me that's a brilliant thing to do,” he said on last week’s earnings call.

But the money must be used for something, otherwise it will drag on JPMorgan’s returns — like a fund manager sittng on too much idle cash.

Paul J. Davies Bloomberg 23 July 2025 

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-23/dimon-success-creates-headaches-for-jpmorgan

 

I don’t want to be a tone deaf CEO; while the company is doing fine, it is absolutely obvious that a big chunk of [people] have been left behind 

40% of Americans make less than $15 an hour: 

40% of Americans can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car 

15% of Americans make minimum wages. 

70,000 die from opioids.

Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/07/junk-bond-investors-pile-into-riskiest.html

Worried About Stocks? $1 Trillion in Buybacks Will Help

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/06/buy-bacls.html