August AP news? AP is nothing but a covert socialist organization which isn't capable of functioning as a news provider at all.
From AP:
Dimon got something of a vote of confidence from President Barack Obama, who appeared on ABC's "The View" for an episode to be aired Tuesday. Obama used the appearance to press for tighter regulation of Wall Street.
"JPMorgan is one of the best-managed banks there is," the president said. "Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting."
Obama said the bank was "making bets" in the market for the complex financial instruments known as derivatives. Dimon has said the bank was hedging against financial risk.
So what do you have here? The usual DM recast revisionism, or composition, in order to promote himself. The usual misrepresentation by Dimon, that is, if he even knew what had occurred.
JPM's trading operation was engaged in hedging their structural portfolio hedges in an attempt to scalp fluctuations for proprietary gain. Literally, betting against their bet against their bet. Thus, what are they complaining about? It worked. Problem is, the tail of the tail is thrown around chaotically. You have to be right on entry and then deftly get out. Because all markets have become discontinuous deft isn't possible. Discontinuity comes from whimsical. There's thousands of guys who collectively are throwing around hundreds of billions of dollars and who move on the most absurd dreamed up nonsense and this results in opening gaps. I guess eventually the markets will devolve into delta function movement where from day to day they open at some unbounded upside level, trade there, only to drop to zero the next day. |
