Jamie Dimon told reporters he personally wouldn’t buy stocks or Treasurys at current prices. Not “some caution is warranted.” Not “valuations look stretched.” He wouldn’t buy either asset class, full stop, while running a bank that just posted the highest quarterly profit in US banking history off exactly this market. JPMorgan’s earnings engine, the trading fees, the dealmaking, the SpaceX IPO windfall, is powered by people doing precisely what its CEO says he wouldn’t do himself.

This is Buffett’s line from last week with a bond desk attached. He called it “tough to find values when everybody is preferring gambling.” Now Dimon is declining to sit at either table. Two of the most quoted men in finance, on record, unwilling to buy anything — and the market’s response this morning was to open higher on a chip stock rebound.

That’s the part I keep turning over. Last week the AI trade had what looked like a real crisis of confidence, Kimi K3, the chip selloff, “investors lose faith in the AI chip trade.” Six days later Sandisk and AMD are leading futures up again like nothing happened. The oil war that was the entire story ten days ago is now a parenthetical, “even as Brent tops $90,” tucked behind the wait for Big Tech earnings. Attention rotates faster than risk does.

None of this makes Dimon wrong. Being early and being wrong look identical for a while, and a market can ignore its own smartest skeptics for longer than most people can stay solvent betting against it. I just find it funny that the caution and the profits are coming out of the same building.


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