Breaking Down Jamie Dimon’s Investing Letter

In this episode of Motley Fool Money, Motley Fool contributors Tyler Crowe, Lou Whiteman, and Jason Hall discuss:

• Jamie Dimon’s message to JPMorgan investors.
• Dimon’s words of warning to the private credit market.
• Whether rolling back bank regulations is the best idea.
• Pershing Square’s bid for Universal Music Group.
• Bill Ackman’s investing track record.
• Listener question: Are covered call ETFs a good idea?

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A full transcript is below.

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This podcast was recorded on April 7, 2026.

Tyler Crowe: Jamie Dimon spoke, and we kind of listened? Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I'm Tyler Crowe, and today I'm joined by long-time Fool contributors Lou Whiteman and Jason Hall, who's pulling in for spot duty because you know what? It's that time of the season with spring breaks and family stuff. Matt Frankel needed a little bit of time off. We brought in Jason off the bench for a little discussion here today. What we are going to get into is we have a big deal in the wings with Bill Ackman looking to acquire Universal Music Group, and we're also going to dip into the mailbag.

But before we get started, we are going to look at Jamie Dimon's most recent investing letter. Before we do, the list of people who can write a letter and move markets is pretty small, perhaps even smaller today, now that Warren Buffett is no longer writing the Berkshire letter. On that short list is Jamie Dimon, who recently penned the annual shareholder letter for JPMorgan Chase's annual report. Now, before we really dive into what it said or anything like that, I do want to couch it a little bit, maybe a little bit of disclosure. Jason, are you a shareholder of JPMorgan?

Jason Hall: I am not. Now, my family does through ETFs but not directly.

Tyler Crowe: What about you, Lou?

Lou Whiteman: Me neither.

Tyler Crowe: We have three people who don't have direct investments in JPMorgan, but clearly have a lot of things to get into with this. There was a lot in this letter. It is considerably longer than what you would say a Warren Buffett letter was. He threw some shade at emerging fintech companies, while simultaneously acknowledging JPMorgan has the catching up to do in that area. He opined on bank regulations and how to fix them as the CEO of the largest bank in the U.S. that would benefit from less regulation. There was quite a few words dedicated to the risk on the horizon, with quite a bit of time on private credit, and we'll get into all that. Now, we all read the letter. It was our homework assignment before we doing this. For each of you, I want to ask two things and pull out from these letters. What made you say, heck, yeah, and I'm really behind what he was saying, were the other one like, are you sure about that, Jamie? I want to start with what you guys liked in the letter and any investing takeaways from it. Lou, let's start with you.

Lou Whiteman: First things first, Jamie really likes this role, and he likes looking contrarian. I think you have to filter it with that. If the sky is falling, he's going to talk about the sunshine. When things are sunny, he's going to talk about the clouds. That's just the way he does this. That said, Jamie is not a big fan of private credit, and I found interesting or liked what he had to say, or I thought it was useful. Look, part of it with private credit is it is the competition. But also, he has some points. He writes, "It has always been true that not everyone providing credit is necessarily good at it." I think that that simple advice should be kept in mind for anyone pursuing some of these stocks that are private credit companies. Blue has been taking on the Chan. We'll see about them, but at least something to keep in the back of the mind, just because they're doing it doesn't mean they have all the answers either related.

He has a warning for all of us invested in private equity firms. The average hold time is now seven years. That's nearly double what it used to be. Exits have become a real issue, and this is in a bull market. What Jamie's warning was is that if we do end up in a recession or an extended recession, it could get really ugly in PE Land. If they can't sell these things now, how are they going to do them if the bull market turns? I think that that is worth again, part of the due diligence as you consider these companies. It's worth keeping in mind.

Jason Hall: Lou, I don't think he was just talking about the folks in private credit, not necessarily being good at lending. There are plenty of banks that have been proven to not be good at lending. That actually ties a little bit into something that Dimon wrote. It was about competition. He wrote, "Nonetheless, despite our best efforts, the walls that protect this company are not particularly high." This is an industry with relentless competition at times, onerous regulation, and Dimon has built something pretty incredible. I would think you could argue that because of regulation in some instances, the bank has succeeded. It's pretty great to be the FDIC's choice to take over failed institutions that actually have really great assets and customers.

I will push back a little bit, Lou, on the hat of being optimistic when times are bad and switching to the pessimist when times are good hat. Sure, I think he does love being viewed as that contrarian, but I also think that that's how he's wired. When you're running the biggest bank in the world, you not only have all of these assets, but you have massive liabilities because that's the capital that you've lent out, you have to be a little bit paranoid all of the time about the economy. Then, when you combine that with this ruthless ambition, you get the right combined mindset that's made JPMorgan such an incredibly dominant business over the past couple of decades.

Tyler Crowe: I feel like what I'm saying is almost like a backhanded compliment because there was a lot of words in the particular letter that he gave related to some of the new investing themes or lending practices that the company wants to have. They started up this defense-focused fund, and I believe that it Ted Weschler is going to be part of the team running that. That was announced a little while ago. There was also like this invest in Main Street thing. I'll give Dimon a lot of credit. It was very much like taking the pulse of America almost and being in the zeitgeist of what people are wanting to talk about, whether it be conflicts overseas, the war in Iran or the war between Ukraine and Russia while, at the same time, talking about like affordability and entrepreneurship in the United States. But it was also just like, but this is just lending. You're being a bank and telling us that you're just going to lend to people, which is very interesting, but a good way of really putting up the marketing for it.

Jason Hall: Tyler, 95% of fintech is just packaging.

Tyler Crowe: That is true, and that could be said for bags, as well. In that regard, as I throw a little bit of shade at this already, even though I was trying to give him a compliment, as you looked at the letter, it was pretty extensive, what were some of the things where you were like, are you really sure about that? Because we always have some a line, we're like, I don't know if I believe that.

Jason Hall: This segment reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skit they did about Amazon Alexa giving answers, and everybody's response was, I don't know about that. The thing that stood out to me was when Dimon Roth, JPMorgan Chase isn't a conglomerate. In the world of banking, it's absolutely a conglomerate. It does basically everything. But where it's different than a lot of conglomerates is it actually does almost everything pretty well. It's also built huge franchises in some of the most profitable parts of banking, things like credit cards, for instance. It's done it.

Again, the timing has been incredibly fortunate, extremely low defaults because there's been really steady economic growth over most of that period, the tailwinds of low taxes, low interest rates. I mentioned it before being Uncle Sam's favorite banker. At some point, I'm afraid those tailwinds could change, and the result could be some of JPMorgan Chase's strengths that have been built in that conglomerate. Yes, Jamie Dimon, I'm calling your bank a conglomerate. Some of the strengths might end up being weaknesses when the tides turn.

Lou Whiteman: I want to get into the weeds here. Dimon was one of the leaders in killing what was called Basel III, which was this global framework that was thought up by regulators after 2008 to try to avoid repeating what happened in 2008. They won. They killed it, and he spiked the football in this letter. I get why he hated it. Fewer capital reserves means more money to lend, more money to make money on. Arguably, Jason, like you said, some banks are better than others. Arguably, this might be too onerous for JPMorgan if it's well run, but not everybody is as well run, as you say. We promised we learned our lessons and we'll be good this time, and so you don't have to punish us. Argument tends not to age well. Jamie, enjoy your moment now. We'll see. I hope you're right.

Tyler Crowe: These regulations aren't necessarily built for a JPMorgan, because the way that it's constructed, it's probably one of the more fiscally conservative, financially solvent. As you said, Dimon always tends to be slightly contra, and when everyone's risk on. He's like, I don't know about that. Spiking the football, as you said, with Basel almost feels like, it's good for you, but is it good for banking? Because I don't necessarily know if those rules were put up specifically for JPMorgan, even though it does affect them. It's more for, like, what we could call the bad actors in the system.

Lou Whiteman: Spot one, you want to regulate for the weakest link, not for the strongest link.

Tyler Crowe: Coming up off for the break, we're going to get into Bill Ackman's recent attempt to buy Universal Music Group.

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Tyler Crowe: Speaking of investors who are often on the front page, Bill Ackman certainly fits that description. Pershing Square is his investment vehicle, the hedge fund. He's been trying to basically buy Universal Music Group numerous times over. But this specific time, it was a deal announced today with a new deal that would basically value Universal Music Group at about $60 billion. Now, this isn't the first time that Ackman tried to do it. There was a spark, I believe, back in 2021, that he was using to try to acquire a portion of Universal Music Group that would have made them like a controlling stakeholder. Much like that previous one, this new deal is also a bit on the convoluted side. Now, knowing the three of us, there's probably a temptation to do, like, a Statler and Waldorf impersonation from the Muppets and just heckle him from the background. But to avoid that fate, I want to get started here. What does Ackman specifically see in Universal Music Group that it's been like his white whale for the past several years?

Jason Hall: This is a cash cow business, and to a large degree, it owns irreplaceable assets between artists that it has signed and music rights that it just outright owns. It's the world's largest label. It's a business that shouldn't really require a ton of operating expenses, but whose assets should just generate steady royalties from streamers and radio stations. He's always been interested in those cash cow businesses.

Tyler Crowe: Like I said, the deal is convoluted, in part, not just because Bill Ackman's pension for using convoluted structures to make acquisitions, but also the ownership structure of Universal Music Group is a little convoluted in its own way because it has a whole bunch of I wouldn't call them majority owners, but owners with enough of a stake that if they say no, the deal wouldn't go through. Because of that, it makes it a little bit harder to convince them to get rid to sell their stake. This isn't the first time he's tried to do deals and done it in some convoluted way. Frankly, we've all had questions about the viability of doing it or valuation or whatever. Now, I don't want to speak to either of you, but Ackman's track record isn't necessarily spotless, don't you agree?

Lou Whiteman: Yeah. What exactly are we trying to accomplish here, Bill? What's the big picture? It feels like he's just throwing his spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. That's the strategy right now. He wants to do the Universal deal under his Pershing Square holding company. He's also been trying to take Pershing Square and various entities public in various forms for the last few years with little success, but he's trying that again now. He's not doing this under Howard Hughes Holdings, a separate public company that he also controls and which he claims he's going to turn into the new Berkshire Hathaway. The new Berkshire Hathaway could really use that cash cow, Jason mentioned to make it happen. Bill choose a child here. I'm not going to slam the plan. I think it makes sense to try and go after these assets, but I would at least appreciate if he picked a vehicle and went with it. If you're a Howard Hughes shareholder, you're saying, what about us you buying some insurance thing and hoping for the best? Multitasking never works well for almost all of us. It's probably going to work out well for Ackman if any one of these succeed. But as investors, I really like the one I'm involved with to succeed or for them all to succeed.

Jason Hall: I think it's important to remember, too, that even th