Over two years ago, Warren Buffett mentioned that he owns 1,000,000 shares of J.P. Morgan in his personal account. He expressed his admiration for the CEO Jamie Dimon, but he did not go into much detail explaining why he thought J.P. Morgan was a great investment. If I had to guess his answer, I suspect it would be this—J.P. Morgan continues to mint money even though the headlines about the company are frequently negative and the company had to cut the dividend during the financial crisis. The gap between actual business results and perceived business results exists when it comes to many banks, and J.P. Morgan is no exception.
Even during the worst of the financial crisis, J.P. Morgan remained profitable. It made $3.6 billion in profits in 2008. The issue is that the company was on the hook for paying out $6 billion in dividends to shareholders (based on … Read the rest of this article!