JPMorgan ChaseWide moat

JPM — overall economic moat

Investment snapshot
Wide moat↗ WideningConfidenceHighValuationFair
Strongest advantageA $2.56tn deposit base at 1.80%
Greatest threatThe credit cycle, levered five times
Key metricROTCE vs a ~10% cost of equity
Verdict: The app's first bank, and a wide moat built on the cheapest large pool of money in finance — cleared its cost of equity every year for a decade, including 2020. The uncomfortable part is that most of what protects it was imposed by regulators rather than built, and the competition that matters has arranged not to be a bank.
📈 JPM valuation, revenue & earnings — P/E, P/S, revenue, EPS →

A bank borrows money short and lends it long, and the difference is the business. JPMorgan Chase does that at a scale nothing else in this collection approaches: $4.42 trillion of assets, $2.56 trillion of deposits, $1.49 trillion of loans and 318,512 employees1.

JPMorgan revenue, 2025Commercial & Investment Bank — 43%Consumer & Community Banking — 42%Asset & Wealth Management — 13%Corporate — 2%$182.4bn in total. 2025 was the first year the wholesale bank out-earned the consumer bank.
Three businesses that would each earn less standing alone.

It makes money three ways, and they are genuinely different businesses. Net interest income — the spread between what it pays depositors and what it earns on loans and securities — was about $100 billion in 2025. Fees come from arranging deals, moving corporate payments, servicing assets and managing money. And trading revenue comes from standing between buyers and sellers in markets.

Those flow through three segments. The Commercial & Investment Bank brought in $78.5 billion in 2025, the Consumer & Community Banking business $76.0 billion, and Asset & Wealth Management $24.1 billion, with the remainder in Corporate — $182.4 billion of total net revenue in all2. The order matters: 2025 was the first year the wholesale bank out-earned the consumer bank.

What comes out the other end is $57.0 billion of net income, $20.02 a share, a 17% return on equity and a 20% return on tangible common equity3 — against a cost of equity nearer 10%. It has cleared that hurdle every year for a decade, including 2020.

The balance sheet is the other half of the story. Common equity Tier 1 capital of $288 billion is a 14.6% ratio against a requirement, including all regulatory buffers, of 11.5%4. Jamie Dimon has put the surplus at $30 to $40 billion above any plausible requirement. The bank returned 82% of its earnings to shareholders over the twelve months to December 20255.

The market pays about 14.5 times earnings and 2.7 times book for it. That is a re-rating — this business spent most of the past decade between nine and thirteen times — and it is the argument this file is about: whether a bank that consistently earns twice its cost of capital should be priced like a bank. Each of the three businesses is taken in turn in The Revenue Lines, with Corporate explained in its overview.

The number that tests this moat
Reported
Revenue, and where it comes from
$182.4bn in 2025 — CIB 43%, CCB 42%

Commercial & Investment Bank $78.5bn, Consumer & Community Banking $76.0bn, Asset & Wealth Management $24.1bn, with Corporate the remainder. 2025 was the first year the wholesale bank out-earned the consumer bank. Watch that split: it is the difference between an annuity and a cycle sitting at the centre of the company.

Source: JPMorgan Chase Form 10-K, FY2025 ↗
Moat scorecardHow ratings work →
Switching costs7/10
Network effects6/10
Pricing power6/10
Hard to replicate9/10
Disruption resistance6/10
Overall durability8/10

A deposit franchise that cannot be assembled from a standing start, three businesses that fund each other, and a regulatory wall that also caps the return.

Dig deeper
DIG DEEPER 01
The Revenue Lines
Three businesses of similar revenue and very different profit: the wholesale bank now earns more than half of what the three make.
DIG DEEPER 02
The Moat
Most bank moats are not moats: loans are commodities and deposits pay market rates. Four things here are real, and the most durable of them was…
DIG DEEPER 03
Competitors
JPMorgan wins comfortably against everyone playing by the same rules, which is why the competition that matters has arranged not to play by them.
DIG DEEPER 04
Major Clients
Every other company here discloses a concentration table and several are alarming. JPMorgan has nothing to disclose, and the absence is the asset.
✦ Future bets — beyond today's moat
✦ FUTURE BET 01
The Future Bets
A credit card portfolio taken from Goldman, sixty billion dollars of surplus capital, and a machine that is already cutting the payroll -- none of it…
⚠ Threats to the moat
⚠ THREAT 01
Dimon, and What Comes After
Two co-presidents were named in June 2026 and the frontrunner retired, which clarified the succession without resolving it.
⚠ THREAT 02
A Bank Is a Levered Bet on Being Right About Credit
1.49 trillion dollars of loans against 290 billion of tangible equity -- a five percent loss across the book would take a quarter of the capital.
◆ What the market may be missing
◆ THE VARIANT VIEW
What the Market Isn't Pricing In
Fourteen and a half times earnings on what are plainly peak-cycle numbers, and the question is not whether they are peak but what the trough now looks…
◆ THE VARIANT VIEW
Inside the Latest Quarter (Q2 2026)
A 29 percent return on tangible equity that is really 23 percent, in a quarter the chief executive himself called particularly favourable.
References
  1. ReportedTotal assets $4,424,900M, deposits $2,559,320M, loans $1,493,429M and 318,512 employees at 31 December 2025.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co., Form 10-K FY2025 — consolidated financial statements and management's discussion (SEC, CIK 19617). Total net revenue $182,447M (2024 $177,556M, 2023 $158,104M); total noninterest expense $95,640M (2023 $87,172M); pre-provision profit $86,807M; provision for credit losses $14,212M; net income $57,048M; diluted EPS $20.02; ROE 17%, ROTCE 20% (2024 22%, 2023 21%); overhead ratio 52% (2024 52%, 2023 55%); loans-to-deposits 58% (56%, 55%); deposits 63% of total liabilities. Total assets $4,424,900M, loans $1,493,429M, deposits $2,559,320M, tangible common equity $290,018M, book value per share $126.99, tangible book value per share $107.56, dividends declared per share $5.80 (2024 $4.80, 2023 $4.10). Segment total net revenue: CCB $76,029M / $71,507M / $70,148M; CIB $78,454M / $70,114M / $64,353M; AWM $24,073M / $21,578M / $19,827M. Banking & Payments by client coverage: Global Corporate Banking and Global Investment Banking $25,285M, Commercial Banking $11,851M. Deposit average balances and rates: US non-interest-bearing $572,014M (2024 $611,734M, 2023 $635,791M); US interest-bearing demand $321,145M at 3.26%; US savings $875,519M at 1.41%; total deposits 1.80% (2024 2.08%, 2023 1.70%). An estimated bargain purchase gain of $2.8bn was recorded for the year ended 31 December 2023 on the First Republic acquisition, with a further $588M First Republic-related gain in the first quarter of 2025; 2024 revenue included a $7.9bn net gain on Visa shares. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-13 · source ↗
  2. ReportedSegment total net revenue in 2025: CIB $78,454M, CCB $76,029M, AWM $24,073M, of $182,447M in total.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co., Form 10-K FY2025 — consolidated financial statements and management's discussion (SEC, CIK 19617). Total net revenue $182,447M (2024 $177,556M, 2023 $158,104M); total noninterest expense $95,640M (2023 $87,172M); pre-provision profit $86,807M; provision for credit losses $14,212M; net income $57,048M; diluted EPS $20.02; ROE 17%, ROTCE 20% (2024 22%, 2023 21%); overhead ratio 52% (2024 52%, 2023 55%); loans-to-deposits 58% (56%, 55%); deposits 63% of total liabilities. Total assets $4,424,900M, loans $1,493,429M, deposits $2,559,320M, tangible common equity $290,018M, book value per share $126.99, tangible book value per share $107.56, dividends declared per share $5.80 (2024 $4.80, 2023 $4.10). Segment total net revenue: CCB $76,029M / $71,507M / $70,148M; CIB $78,454M / $70,114M / $64,353M; AWM $24,073M / $21,578M / $19,827M. Banking & Payments by client coverage: Global Corporate Banking and Global Investment Banking $25,285M, Commercial Banking $11,851M. Deposit average balances and rates: US non-interest-bearing $572,014M (2024 $611,734M, 2023 $635,791M); US interest-bearing demand $321,145M at 3.26%; US savings $875,519M at 1.41%; total deposits 1.80% (2024 2.08%, 2023 1.70%). An estimated bargain purchase gain of $2.8bn was recorded for the year ended 31 December 2023 on the First Republic acquisition, with a further $588M First Republic-related gain in the first quarter of 2025; 2024 revenue included a $7.9bn net gain on Visa shares. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-13 · source ↗
  3. Reported2025 net income $57,048M, diluted EPS $20.02, return on equity 17% and return on tangible common equity 20%.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co., Form 10-K FY2025 — consolidated financial statements and management's discussion (SEC, CIK 19617). Total net revenue $182,447M (2024 $177,556M, 2023 $158,104M); total noninterest expense $95,640M (2023 $87,172M); pre-provision profit $86,807M; provision for credit losses $14,212M; net income $57,048M; diluted EPS $20.02; ROE 17%, ROTCE 20% (2024 22%, 2023 21%); overhead ratio 52% (2024 52%, 2023 55%); loans-to-deposits 58% (56%, 55%); deposits 63% of total liabilities. Total assets $4,424,900M, loans $1,493,429M, deposits $2,559,320M, tangible common equity $290,018M, book value per share $126.99, tangible book value per share $107.56, dividends declared per share $5.80 (2024 $4.80, 2023 $4.10). Segment total net revenue: CCB $76,029M / $71,507M / $70,148M; CIB $78,454M / $70,114M / $64,353M; AWM $24,073M / $21,578M / $19,827M. Banking & Payments by client coverage: Global Corporate Banking and Global Investment Banking $25,285M, Commercial Banking $11,851M. Deposit average balances and rates: US non-interest-bearing $572,014M (2024 $611,734M, 2023 $635,791M); US interest-bearing demand $321,145M at 3.26%; US savings $875,519M at 1.41%; total deposits 1.80% (2024 2.08%, 2023 1.70%). An estimated bargain purchase gain of $2.8bn was recorded for the year ended 31 December 2023 on the First Republic acquisition, with a further $588M First Republic-related gain in the first quarter of 2025; 2024 revenue included a $7.9bn net gain on Visa shares. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-13 · source ↗
  4. ReportedBasel III CET1 capital of $288bn, a Standardized ratio of 14.6%, against a requirement including all regulatory buffers of 11.5%.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co., Form 10-K FY2025 — capital risk management (SEC, CIK 19617). Basel III common equity Tier 1 capital of $288 billion and a Standardized CET1 ratio of 14.6%; the Standardized CET1 requirement including all regulatory buffers was 11.5%. The stress capital buffer requirement is 2.5% and remains in effect through 30 September 2027, based on the severely adverse scenario of the Federal Reserve's supervisory stress test; the annual CCAR submission was due 6 April 2026. Capital is allocated to the lines of business using standardized risk-weighted assets and the GSIB surcharge under rules currently in effect, reassessed at least annually. The enhanced supplementary leverage ratio rules revise the static leverage buffers to 50% of the bank holding company's US Method 1 GSIB surcharge, capped at 1% for insured depository institution subsidiaries. The July 2023 proposal to amend the US risk-based capital framework (the Basel III endgame) was never finalised; in September 2025 the Federal Reserve's Vice Chair for Supervision indicated regulators may issue an updated proposal in early 2026 replacing it, the timing and content of which remain uncertain. The Apple Card transaction reduced the Standardized CET1 ratio by approximately 25 basis points. — FY2025 · publ. 2026-02-13 · source ↗
  5. ReportedNet payout over the twelve months to December 2025 was 82%.
    JPMorgan Chase & Co., fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings release (Form 8-K, exhibit 99.1) — fourth-quarter net income $13.0bn ($4.63 per share), or $14.7bn ($5.23) excluding a significant item; full-year 2025 net income $57.0bn ($20.02 per share), 2025 ROE 17% and ROTCE 20%. Fourth-quarter reported revenue $45.8bn and managed revenue $46.8bn; net interest income $25.1bn, up 7%; expense $24.0bn; credit costs $4.7bn with $2.5bn of net charge-offs. CET1 Standardized 14.5% and Advanced 14.1%, total loss-absorbing capacity $564bn, Standardized RWA $2.0tn, cash and marketable securities $1.5tn; book value per share $126.99 up 9% and tangible book value per share $107.56 up 11%; Basel III CET1 capital $288bn; supplementary leverage ratio 5.8%; net payout over the last twelve months 82%. Segment returns: CCB 4Q ROE 25% and 2025 ROE 32% with a Card Services net charge-off rate of 3.14%, debit and credit card sales volume up 7% and active mobile customers up 7%; CIB 4Q ROE 19% and 2025 ROE 18%, investment banking fees down 5% year on year with a #1 ranking for global investment banking fees at 8.4% wallet share for the year, markets revenue up 17%; AWM 4Q ROE 44% and 2025 ROE 40%, AUM $4.8tn up 18%. Payments revenue reached a record $5.1bn. In 2025 the firm opened 1.7 million net new checking accounts and 10.4 million new credit card accounts and grew wealth management households to over 3 million. The significant item in 4Q25 was a $2.2bn credit reserve established for the forward purchase commitment of the Apple credit card portfolio, a $0.60 decrease in EPS. — Q4 and FY2025 · publ. 2026-01-13 · source ↗
Sources
Generated September 23, 2026