While many on Wall Street are crowing about the end of Fed rate hikes, Jamie Dimon remains unconvinced.
The CEO of JPMorgan Chase said Fed chairman Jerome Powell’s current pause on increases to the base rate shouldn’t be taken as gospel that the only way is down, saying there’s anywhere between 25 to 75 basis points higher the Fed could go.
The leader of America’s biggest bank steered clear of throwing down the gauntlet and making an official prediction—instead he told Yahoo Finance he was merely assessing all options to make sure the business was ready to adapt.
Speaking at a conference in Texas, Dimon said: “I think [the Fed] are right to pause here and see what happens. I suspect that they may not be done.”
The Fed has held rates at 5.25% to 5.50% for the third time since launching its campaign to grapple down inflation in March 2022.
Dimon’s caution may be inspired by Powell’s refusal to make promises about future moves, telling reporters on Wednesday “we’re not confident that we haven’t, we’re not confident that we have” reached the point of rates where inflation can be tamed.
“Inflation has been coming down, but it’s still running well above our 2% target,” he said. “A few months of good data are only the beginning of what it will take to build confidence.”
Instead of reading between the lines of this uncertain outlook, Dimon said he runs the company by stress-testing a range of outcomes.
“We stress for a whole bunch of different things basically to make sure we can handle low rates, high rates, high rates with inflation, high rates with recession, high rates with real estate losses,” Dimon said. “We’re in pretty good shape…which means we can serve our clients regardless of that.”
Not everyone will be weighing up their options as thoughtfully, and investors making bets based on assumptions may at some point find themselves out in the cold, Dimon warned.
“I suspect that those higher rates…you’re going to see quite a few people swimming naked. They couldn’t take the double whammy of stagflation or bad real estate or something like that,” Dimon added. “When I talk to small businesses I say be prepared for a range of events.”
Dimon was paraphrasing a famous quote from legendary investor Warren Buffett, who famously said: “Only when the tide goes out do you learn who has been swimming naked.” This basically means that during good times investors who made bad bets could be functioning without anyone realizing their position, but when reality bites they’re exposed as being out of step with their peers.
What’s Dimon worrying about?
Dimon—who is reportedly a billionaire himself—may not doubt his ability to serve his clients, but he is extremely concerned about the wider geopolitical landscape.
On an earnings call earlier this month Dimon told analysts the current climate “may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades.”
Citing conflicts in Ukraine and Israel, Dimon doubled down on his point during the interview at JPMorgan Chase’s Make Your Move Summit.
The global tensions have proved that oil and food security is “paramount” but have similarly exposed weakness in these areas, Dimon said, adding: “Leaders are saying, ‘We need to take care of this, it is for America,’ because if we don’t fix this the world may not be completely safe for freedom and democracy as we know it for the next 100 years.”
