A mixture of accounting moves and rosy assumptions appear to masked JPMorgan's London Whale.
Jamie Dimon
Whale Killer and CEO Jamie Dimon
FORTUNE -- Here is perhaps the most amazing thing about JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) $5.8 billion trading loss: Take a look at the firm's overall results, and it's like the London Whale's misstep, one of the largest flubs in the history of Wall Street, never happened.
Back in mid-April, about two weeks before talk of the trading losses emerged, JPMorgan was expected to earn $1.21 a share in its second quarter. On Friday, JPMorgan reported that it had, Whale and all, earned exactly that.
How the bank appears to have offset the huge trading loss is a prime example of how complex and malleable bank profits actually are, and how much they are to be believed. JPMorgan's quarter should give fodder for accountants to talk about for some time.
MORE: Who will take JPMorgan to task?
"Yes, I have seen these results, but I have also seen how the sausage is made and I am worried that I might get food poisoning in the future," Mike Mayo of CLSA and author of the book Exile on Wall Street told Dimon in a meeting with analysts following
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/13/jpmorgan-hid-london-whale/?section=money_markets&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_markets+%28Markets%29
Realist - Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same -- hardihood. Give them raw truth.
| 