I'm not pointing to his commentary on Bitcoin or whatever. I was just stating a fact, that Dimon isn't considered brilliant by any Mark by industry insiders in finance, just lucky during 08. He has been wrong on a lot of things, even though I actually agree with his crypto thesis.

I’m not sure what you mean, his bank was the strongest and most highly capitalized during 2008. He famously had to be brow beaten into accepting federal bailout money.

And brilliant doesn’t mean perfect. he’s had his share of mistakes, but his business record is one of the best.

a.) Jamie Dimon had nothing to do with JPMorgan's strong financial position in 2008. He just lucked into the fact that JPM was not exposed to MBSs as heavily as the others. JPM did get exposed mightily in the flash crash of 2012 though, and that was under his watch.

2.) Where do you get this info that he was "brow-beaten" into accepting Fed money? Many of the banks, including others such as Wells Fargo and Boa didn't need the money either. That was just Hank Paulson's way of compensating them for the really expensive acquisitions, which none of the banks wanted to do really (JPM got Chase, Wells Fargo got Wachovia, BoA got Merrill Lynch, Buffett got Goldman Sachs and Lehman was left to die).

3.) There are way more brilliant bankers and financiers than Dimon in the financial industry. Steven Schwarzman and Peter Peterson built a behemoth investment firm from the ground up. Sergio Ermotti just engineered one of the best turnarounds for a big bank at UBS. Blankfein and now Solomon effectively shifted GS from their S&T desks to give more power to the Strats Tech teams, effectively changing the culture at GS, a sector where JPM is effectively lagging in spite of being the largest bank with the biggest resources. And this is not even taking into account some of the more brilliant bankers abroad.

Compared to nitwists like Thain or Corbat or whoever, sure Jamie Dimon beats them. But there are way more brilliant bankers who actually built something. Jamie is the classic example of happened to be at the right place at the right time.

I honestly don't know how this hero-worship of Dimon came to be - maybe it's those memes they have running around.

1) Jamie Dimon had been COO for four years, and CEO for over two years, if he wasn’t responsible for the banks capital position, who was?

2) if JP Morgan Chase wasn’t as exposed to the MBS meltdown as other banks, how is that not to his credit?

3) The $6B in trading losses in 2012 didn’t stop JPMorgan from posting a record profit of $21B for the year.

Anyone looks bad if you attribute all their accomplishments to luck but doggedly hold them responsible for every mistake.

I did confuse Dimon with Kovacevich, but Jamie also didn’t need the TARP funding.

In the end a 12%+ annualized return and total return 50% higher than the S&P500 over 15 years is nothing to sneeze at.

1.) It's standard practice for COOs to take over when CEOs leave. Jamie Dimon's COO position was a result of the merger between Bank One and JPMorgan. Nothing unique.

2.) Different banks had different focus areas, and not everyone jumped into the MBS bandwagon. If you notice, all investment-banking oriented banks got rekted while all the consumer banks stayed afloat, bar some exceptional risky bets by the likes of Wachovia and Chase. All the survivors were consumer banks eating up investment banks.

3.) A profit that can be attributed from the consumer banking side.

4.) Most of the annualized return you mentioned comes from 2017 on, when the tax cuts came. Not the 15 years you mention. Before that, it was lagging at 50$ per share.

1) yes he was second in command got 4 years, and in total control for two more, how is that not give him huge influence on the banks capital structure?

2) So for 6 years he could have had his team chase bigger profits like Wachovia, Bear Stearns, et al by making risky bets on MBS but didn’t.

3) he’s not responsible for the consumer banking side?

4) Everyone in the S&P 500 all got the same tax cuts, yet he finished over 50% ahead of the average. And they are all up big since 2017, but he’s still way ahead.

1.) Do you think upper management in banks even care about what happens in individual teams? Pre-2008, upper management was significantly detached from the individual departments in every bank. Its only now that they are being regulated to take a much closer look. Second-in-command does not mean he's at the trenches dictating trading rules - thats up to individual product teams. And back then, JPMorgan wasn't even comparable to the Bear, ML, GS in S&T. JPMorgan's bread and butter was and continues to be Corporate Financing and Consumer Finance.

2.) Who knows, if 2008 hadn't happened, he might have joined the bandwagon too. Not to mention that JPMorgan's S&T was nothing compared to those players in 2008, so obviously their "risky bets" were minimal.

3.) You're going to attribute consumer side banking to him? Consumer banking is literally a safe-side cash cow for most banks, and you can literally see a number of institutions engaging in it continue to stay safe. He cannot be credited for that.

5.) There are n other companies that have grown even more than JPM. If you're going to use stock prices as a proxy for your argument (which is flawed in itself), GS is currently at 350, almost half of which was gained in the past month. Compared to GS, JPM does seem like a crapper here.

I don't know what's your motivation behind defending Dimon or something, but I'm just echoing the common sentiment in the industry, that he plays it too safe, his cautiousness (often attributed to his ignorance of newer tech) has made JPM a laggard before, and that he was lucky to be loyal dog at Bank One. There are far more brilliant bankers in the industry, for instance Kovacevich who actually changed the face of consumer finance (worse for the consumer eventually, but still changed the face of the industry) or the Blankfein-Solomon duo who brought tech from the backburner and made it one of the most elite teams in the world banking scene (cue Strats and Marcus). Dimon is just like Stumpf (pre-WF scandal) in that he was given one of the biggest banks to play with. I agree, it's not an easy task in itself, but it's certainly not a hard enough one to call him a "brilliant" banker for that.