Jamie Dimon: Risk Of A Double-Dip Recession Is Why We’re Not Hiking The Dividend
Courtesy of Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock
JPMorgan (JPM) seemed to have reported strong earnings on Friday, but the stock sagged, bringing the market down with it.
Michael Corkery at Deal Journal flagged an important, nerve-wracking moment from the company’s conference call:
Dimon: “Look, you guys are just as good at forecasting the economy as anybody else. And we’ve seen delinquencies getting a little bit better, we saw credit card spend be up a little bit…..We think loans in middle market are actually starting to level off and we see small business demand actually go up….there are signs of good signs out there, but we don’t know.
That sounded sort of positive, but a few minutes later, Dimon was invoking the dreaded idea of a double dip recession.
Betsy Graseck of Morgan Stanley asked if there was anything preventing JP Morgan from raising its dividend.
Dimon: Not really. I think we’ve said we really want to see a real recovery before we do that because we don’t want to have to do this again, just in case you have another dip down here.
Finally, Calyon analyst Mike Mayo tried to clear things up. “So you expect [nonperforming assets] to go down in mid or late 2010?”
Dimon: “Well, Mike, we don’t know when the recovery is.”
See Also:
Financial Stocks Getting Whacked After JPMorgan Earnings
JPMorgan Earnings Blow Past Expectations, Revenue Looks Light, Consumer Lending Still Very Ugly
Jamie Dimon Has Had It With The Bonus Bashing
