The House of Dimon marked the unofficial start of earnings season in the US on Tuesday with a predictably solid report.
There’s always a theme for Wall Street results — some common thread that reflects the operating environment. In Q2 2025, it was supposed to be robust markets revenue.
Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff unveil sent stocks and bonds briefly reeling, and the associated tumult was expected to accrue to Wall Street as a trading windfall.
That’s more or less the way it played out at JPMorgan, where FICC revenue of $5.69 billion rose 14% YoY and easily topped the $5.22 billion consensus.
Equities brought in $3.25 billion, up 15% YoY, a record for Q2 and a slight beat to consensus.
Overall markets revenue of nearly $9 billion rose 15% and beat by around $400 million. That’s, uh, not bad. But don’t think of it as JPMorgan cashing in on uncertainty. Think of it as the bank doing its part to steer customers through stormy waters — you know, “God’s work.” “We supported clients as they navigated volatile market conditions at the beginning of the quarter,” Jamie Dimon said.
The big (upside) surprise came in IB, where revenue of $2.68 billion counted as a very large beat to the $2.16 billion consensus. The IB narrative’s basically the flipside of Q2 2025’s trading story: Tariff tumult and associated uncertainty should hamper dealmaking. Apparently not, though.
Note that every line posted outsized beats at JPMorgan. Advisory fees of $844 million easily topped the $672 million estimate, while equity and debt underwriting revenue of $465 million and $1.2 billion, respectively, were a mile ahead of the $351 million and $1 billion consensus calls.
Add those three up and you get the best quarter for IB fees at JPMorgan since Q4 of 2021. “IB activity started slow but gained momentum as market sentiment improved,” Dimon remarked. (I’ll say.)
The only disappointment came from Q2’s NII result. $23.31 billion was short of the $23.59 billion expected. But the bank made up for that by guiding full-year NII higher, to $95.5 billion from $94.5 billion.
The expense guide was on the high side, but the loss provision was well below expectations as were charge-offs and the reserve build. On the top-line, adjusted revenue of $45.68 billion was a beat and EPS of $5.24 beat by $0.75.
All in all, things are going quite well for JPMorgan and as usual, Dimon said the bank will almost surely continue to thrive, particularly now that he’s set to get some of the regulatory relief he’s been after for years.
The US economy was resilient in Q2 and “the finalization of tax reform and potential deregulation are positive for the economic outlook,” Dimon said Tuesday. Although “significant risks persist,” JPMorgan’s “hop[ing] for the best” while preparing “for a wide range” of scenarios, including adverse surprises from “tariffs, trade uncertainty, worsening geopolitical conditions [and] high fiscal deficits.”
This seems like a good time to recycle one of my favorite closing lines: When you’re trudging through the monochromatic remains of human civilization, rest assured you’ll still be able to get a crisp $20 from a dusty Chase ATM, somehow still functioning, a faint blue beacon of hope after the fall.
