Dimon warns on hot markets as JPMorgan and Goldman post record results
JPMorgan’s chief cautioned that risks are building even as Wall Street’s biggest banks reported sharply higher second-quarter earnings.
By Maya Lindqvist · Senior Technology Correspondent
3 min read
Jamie Dimon warned investors that market conditions may be nearing a peak after JPMorgan Chase reported the strongest quarterly profit in its history. The caution matters because the bank’s results, like Goldman Sachs’s, show how much Wall Street is benefiting from heavy trading, dealmaking and investor confidence.
On JPMorgan’s earnings call Tuesday, Dimon told analysts that conditions were “getting close to as good as it gets,” adding that the bank did not know how long they would continue. Earlier in the day, in comments released with JPMorgan’s earnings, he said risk was moving “below the surface like tectonic plates,” pointing to wars, persistent inflation and large government deficits around the world.
JPMorgan reported second-quarter 2026 net income of $21.2 billion, or $7.70 a share. The total included a $4.6 billion gain tied to the bank’s Visa holding, according to JPMorgan’s results.
Excluding one-time items, JPMorgan said profit was $16.9 billion, or $6.14 a share. That topped the $5.80 per-share analyst estimate cited by Yahoo Finance.
Goldman Sachs also beat Wall Street’s expectations. In its earnings release filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Goldman reported net income of $6.63 billion and diluted earnings of $20.98 a share, up 92% from a year earlier.
Analysts had expected Goldman to earn $14.54 a share, according to Invezz. Goldman said revenue rose 39% from a year earlier to $20.34 billion.
Both JPMorgan and Goldman worked on SpaceX’s IPO, according to Fortune. Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon told CNBC that SpaceX was “immaterial” to Goldman’s quarterly performance.
Market backdrop adds to the warning
The bank results arrived as investors were already weighing new risks. Bloomberg reported that Brent crude climbed above $87 a barrel Tuesday after President Donald Trump said the United States was “reinstating” a blockade on Iranian shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The move escalated a conflict that had lasted more than a week and included U.S. strikes on Iranian targets, according to Fortune. At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported that inflation slowed to 3.5%, a reading that beat expectations and gave consumers some relief before the Federal Reserve’s late-July decision.
Dimon has raised similar concerns before. In late May, he told a gathering of major corporate leaders and financial analysts that markets were “gung ho” and compared the mood with periods before earlier downturns, including 1972, 1986, 2000 and 2007.
“There’s a lot of exuberance out there,” Dimon said at the time, according to Fortune. He added that those earlier periods did not make him comfortable.
That warning sits uneasily beside the banks’ earnings strength. JPMorgan and Goldman can make more money when investors trade often, companies sell shares, borrowers seek financing and mergers increase, according to Fortune’s analysis of the results.
The concern over market enthusiasm has a long history on Wall Street. Former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan made the phrase “irrational exuberance” famous in 1996, and he told Fortune that he had viewed “over-exuberance” as a market concern as far back as 1959.
This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.