In three years, JPMorgan went from openly fearing a 45% capital-requirement increase under proposed Basel III Endgame rules, through a sharp but short-lived confidence dip during the April 2025 tariff shock, to a record-tone Q2 FY2026 with buybacks that had tripled since 2023.
The story
Fall 2023: a good acquisition, a scary new rule
In October 2023, JPMorgan was digesting two very different events. Earlier that May, it had picked up the failed First Republic Bank from the FDIC, absorbing quality assets cheaply enough to book a $2.8 billion bargain-purchase gain. But the same quarter's earnings call was dominated by something else: the newly proposed "Basel III Endgame" capital rules. The CFO warned that if finalized as proposed, the rule would raise capital requirements 45% above 2017 levels, and said buyback pace would "remain modest for now" while the uncertainty lasted. It did — buybacks that year totaled just $9.9 billion, low by the bank's later standards.
2024: the fear fades, guidance keeps climbing
Through 2024, Basel anxiety visibly cooled in the earnings-call transcripts — mentions of "Basel" fell from 13 times in Q3 2023 to 8 in Q1 2024 to essentially zero by Q3 2024. Net interest income guidance was raised at nearly every stop along the way, and the year finished about 5% above where the CFO had first pointed investors. The 10-K told the same story in a different register: the COVID-19 pandemic risk factor — the very first item in the FY2021 risk summary — disappeared entirely starting with the FY2022 filing, and mentions of "COVID" in the body text collapsed from 66 to 16 to 7 to essentially none by FY2024.
April 2025: a new kind of uncertainty, briefly
Calm didn't last. On April 11, 2025 — the first earnings call after the "Liberation Day" tariff announcement — the word "uncertain" appeared 14 times, the most of any of the twelve quarters we reviewed, and "tariff" came up 11 times. CFO Jeremy Barnum put it plainly: "we had a solid quarter, but the focus now is on the future, and that future is unusually uncertain." CEO Jamie Dimon added that the bank had "ample capital and liquidity to navigate this stormy sea," and the bank held onto $30–60 billion of excess capital defensively rather than deploying it. The FY2025 10-K's risk-factor summary added a phrase that hadn't appeared in any of the four prior years' filings: "executive branch actions" — a new, explicitly named category of policy risk.
Recovery, and a record quarter
The tariff scare passed fast. By the very next call (Q2 FY2025), "uncertain" mentions had collapsed back to just 1. Confidence climbed steadily from there, and by the most recent call on record — Q2 FY2026, July 2026 — the word "strong" appeared 19 times, the most of any quarter reviewed. The bank posted $16.9 billion in net income, 23% return on tangible common equity, and 86% year-over-year growth in equities trading revenue; the board raised the quarterly dividend from $1.50 to $1.65 per share. Buybacks, meanwhile, had grown from $9.9 billion in 2023 to $31.6 billion in 2025 — more than tripling in the two years after the Basel fear peaked.
Guidance vs. actual results
| Metric | Initial guidance | Actual | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2024 NII ex-Markets | ~$88B (Q4 FY2023 call) | $92.4B | Beat, +5% |
| FY2024 adjusted expense | ~$90B (Q4 FY2023 call) | $91.8B | Roughly in line |
| FY2025 NII ex-Markets | ~$90B (Q4 FY2024 call) | $92.6B | Beat, +2.9% |
| FY2025 total NII | ~$94B (Q4 FY2024 call) | $95.4B | Beat, +1.5% |
4 of 4 confirmed guidance figures beaten. The pattern is a textbook "conservative guide, then beat" — though the FY2024 beat (+5%) was noticeably wider than FY2025's (+2.9%), consistent with the slow net-interest-margin compression visible in the five-year financials.
Source: CFO commentary on Q4 FY2023–Q2 FY2026 earnings calls, checked against 10-K FY2024 and FY2025 (p.44, Three-Year Summary).
Timeline
- Oct 2023Q3 2023 earnings: Basel III Endgame fear peaks (13 mentions); First Republic integration underway; buybacks kept deliberately modest.
- 2024Basel mentions fade to near zero; NII guidance raised repeatedly through the year, finishing about 5% above the initial figure.
- Apr 11, 2025Q1 2025 earnings, days after "Liberation Day" tariffs: "uncertain" mentioned 14 times, the most of any of 12 quarters reviewed; excess capital held defensively.
- Jul 2025Q2 2025 earnings: "uncertain" mentions collapse to 1; tone recovers quickly.
- Jul 2026Q2 2026 earnings: "strong" mentioned 19 times (a three-year high); record-tone quarter; quarterly dividend raised to $1.65; buybacks more than tripled versus 2023.
Our read
The real arc of these three years is a fear that dissolved rather than one that was overcome. Basel III Endgame never got finalized anywhere near its harshest proposed form, and the political backdrop shifted enough that the risk simply faded from view. The April 2025 tariff wobble was real but brief — a one-quarter scare, not a multi-quarter retreat. What's easy to miss under the record profit headlines is that both core banking metrics — net interest margin and the charge-off rate — have moved modestly in the wrong direction since 2023, even as capital freed from a regulatory fear that never landed has flowed almost entirely into buybacks and a rising dividend rather than into loan growth.
What we still don't know
- The confirmed FY2025 card net charge-off rate isn't fully verified in this pass — it needs the detailed 10-K note tables, not just the summary figures used here.
- Whether 2026's full-year NII and expense guidance is ultimately beaten can't be judged until the FY2026 10-K is filed.
- What CCB CEO Marianne Lake's departure and the promotion of Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh to Co-President means for CEO succession isn't something these filings settle.
- Exactly which policies the new "executive branch actions" risk-factor language refers to isn't specified anywhere in the filing text.
Frequently asked questions
What was Basel III Endgame and why did JPMorgan fear it?
Basel III Endgame was a proposed banking rule that JPMorgan openly worried could raise its capital requirements by as much as 45% — a fear that faded as the rule was softened over the following years.
Has JPMorgan's buyback pace changed?
Yes — JPMorgan's share buybacks had roughly tripled by Q2 FY2026 compared with 2023, alongside a record-confidence tone on that call.
What sources does this analysis draw from?
This piece is built from JPMorgan's 10-K filings for FY2021 through FY2025, DEF 14A 2026, and 12 quarters of earnings call transcripts from October 2023 to July 2026.