Since the company announced May 10 that it lost billions on a bad trade, the JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) stock price has dropped about 20%.
And it may have more to go.
CNN Money reported on Monday afternoon that the trading losses are closer to a range of $6 billion to $7 billion, citing several sources who work on trading desks that specialize in the derivatives JPMorgan Chase used to make its trades.
Investors at the Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Investor Conference in New York drilled CEO Jamie Dimon with questions Monday about how the chief investment office (CIO) racked up the sizable losses.
The biggest U.S. bank by assets, JPMorgan is under pressure from investors and regulators alike to enlighten them on how the CIO, which is in charge of managing excess cash while minimizing risk, made dicey and costly bets on illiquid credit derivatives, some so big they misrepresented market prices.
The $350 billion portfolio managed by the CIO, Dimon reiterated, has a very short duration and an average credit rating of AA designed to "very conservatively handle" interest-rate risks. The heart of the losses, Dimon explained, was the synthetic credit derivative, and just "a part" of the broader portfolio.
JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) losses
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JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Stock Price Falling as Losses Could Hit $7 Billion
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JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) Losses Keep Unraveling
JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) beleaguered CEO Jamie Dimon will not be happy when he reads through Friday's papers.
The Financial Times reported that more than a dozen senior traders and credit experts know that JPMorgan is in a lot more trouble than just suffering $2.3 billion - and counting - in losses.
Turns out the unit at JPMorgan that's responsible for the loss has been the biggest buyer of European mortgage-backed bonds and other complex debt securities in all markets for three years.
Now JPMorgan has built up positions totaling $100 billion in the same risky financial products that triggered the financial crisis in 2008.
But anyone who followed Money Morning's Shah Gilani as he covered the topic knew this was a likely hidden truth.
You see, Gilani told us last Sunday, just days after news of the losses broke, that there was more to these trades than one hedge-gone-wrong.
"The idiots at the bank wanted to hedge against European credit exposure that they had," Gilani wrote last to his Wall Street Insights and Indictments readers. "They are idiots because the money that's shepherded by the Chief Investment Office (some $379 billion, yeah, that number is right) is money that the bank has and hasn't lent out, or technically is "available" to play with. And instead of parking it in U.S. government bonds (Citi has $293 billion of the same float and has 87% of it parked in "governments"), they parked a lot of it in Europe's crappy credit markets."
The Financial Times reported that more than a dozen senior traders and credit experts know that JPMorgan is in a lot more trouble than just suffering $2.3 billion - and counting - in losses.
Turns out the unit at JPMorgan that's responsible for the loss has been the biggest buyer of European mortgage-backed bonds and other complex debt securities in all markets for three years.
Now JPMorgan has built up positions totaling $100 billion in the same risky financial products that triggered the financial crisis in 2008.
But anyone who followed Money Morning's Shah Gilani as he covered the topic knew this was a likely hidden truth.
You see, Gilani told us last Sunday, just days after news of the losses broke, that there was more to these trades than one hedge-gone-wrong.
"The idiots at the bank wanted to hedge against European credit exposure that they had," Gilani wrote last to his Wall Street Insights and Indictments readers. "They are idiots because the money that's shepherded by the Chief Investment Office (some $379 billion, yeah, that number is right) is money that the bank has and hasn't lent out, or technically is "available" to play with. And instead of parking it in U.S. government bonds (Citi has $293 billion of the same float and has 87% of it parked in "governments"), they parked a lot of it in Europe's crappy credit markets."
To continue reading, please click here...