Buffett Brain · Research note
Score updated 22 Oct 2026 · analysis from 1 Jun 2026
JPM· Financial Services
JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan is the best-run big bank in America, but a bank trading at 14 times earnings is still a leveraged black box you must trust on faith.
Buffett fit
Weak fit
Owner
45
Durability
79
Management
77
Price
75
Score updated 22 Oct 2026 · analysis from 1 Jun 2026
Buffett's checklist
Each number against Buffett's bar, and where it ranks among Financial Services stocks in our database.
How much profit the business makes on each dollar invested in it. Higher is better.
What is left of each sale after the cost of making the product. A high number often means pricing power.
The cash the business earns for its owners, compared with the price of the whole company.
How fast sales grew each year over the last five years.
How many years of today's profit you pay for at today's price. Lower means cheaper.
How much the company owes compared with what it owns outright. Lower is safer.
The four pillars
How the business measures up on each of Buffett's four tests.
If I owned all of JPMorgan, I would sleep less soundly than the price suggests.
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Durability scores 79, and I grant that JPMorgan will be standing in fifty years when smaller banks have vanished, because scale, a fortress deposit base, and the implicit blessing of being too important to fail are real advantages.
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Management scores 77, and it has earned it. The share count shrank about 2% a year, the dividend is dependable, and Jamie Dimon has run this company with a discipline rare in banking, building reserves before storms instead of after.
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Here is the one place the stock is genuinely friendly. At 14.2 times earnings and a 12.6% owner-earnings yield, you are not overpaying, and that is why valuation scores 75, not low.
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For and against
The strongest points on each side, with the numbers behind them.
In its favor
7- 1Owner-earnings yield of 12.6% and a of just 14.2 mean you are buying America's premier bank without paying a premium multiple.
- 2 runs at 1.77 times net income, so reported profits are backed by real cash rather than accounting estimates alone.
- 3Management scores 77, with the share count shrinking roughly 2% a year and a long record of disciplined reserving under Jamie Dimon.
- 4Durability scores 79, reflecting a fortress deposit base and the scale advantages of being the largest bank in the country.
Concerns
7- 1Financial health scores just 20, the weakest part of the picture, with of 3.39 and net debt at 11.3 times EBITDA marking this as a deeply leveraged balance sheet.
- 2Return on capital is only 2.98% on a trailing basis and 5.0% over five years, painfully thin returns that depend entirely on heavy to look respectable.
- 3Interest coverage of just 0.76 and a current ratio of 0.62 are numbers that would terrify me in any ordinary business, even if they are normal for a bank.
- 4The scores only 45, because banking is a commodity where JPMorgan competes on scale rather than on any customers cannot escape.
Price history
$335+95.1%· 5-year return
Weekly closing prices. Touch or hover the line for a date.
The business
How the business works
JPMorgan earns money the way every bank does, by borrowing cheaply from depositors and the markets and lending or investing the proceeds at a wider rate, then layering on fees from trading, advising, asset management, and credit cards. The 26.2% and the 21.8% revenue growth of recent years look handsome, but most of that swelling came from higher interest rates lifting the spread, not from some secret sauce. When you strip it down, this is a 2.98% return-on-capital business that uses enormous to turn a thin spread into a respectable result.
How this analysis has moved
The call has held across 5 reviews.
Sep 27, 2026 → Oct 22, 2026
What other investors would say
The same company, judged by three other documented playbooks.
Keep researching
Similar companies in Financial Services
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