Once again this year, J.P. Morgan did not fall short of its crown. Earnings per share rose by 22%, dividends by 17% and shareholders' equity by 11%. Return on equity reached 18%, even with prudential ratios at their highest. No other major bank is capable of such a performance in the USA, let alone Europe.

Unsurprisingly, the retail banking segment is slowing down. Loan volumes are up by only 1% - thanks to credit cards - and net interest margins are down, as we expected, albeit to a far more dramatic extent than anticipated.

Above all, provisions were up 18%, and loan defaults were up 48% - a sure sign that rising interest rates are jeopardizing the solvency of the most precarious borrowers. Added to this is a sharp rise in compensation expenses, which explains the segment's profit, which fell by 17% in 2024 compared with the previous year.

As with Goldman Sachs and Jefferies, the commercial & investment banking segment had a more lucrative year - albeit, again, perhaps to a lesser extent than expected. Segment profit will rise by 23% in 2024, driven primarily by investment banking activities.

As the two above-mentioned segments operate on comparable perimeters - on an annual basis, roughly $70 billion in revenues and $20 billion in profit each - the decline in the former is offset by progress in the latter.

A little less strategic, the asset management segment - $21.5 billion in revenues and $5.4 billion in profit in 2024 - continues to perform excellently. Added to this was an exceptional gain of $7.9 billion from the sale of J.P. Morgan's stake in Visa, which accounted for almost all the year's consolidated profit.

Notably, JPM used the proceeds from the sale of its Visa shares to buy back its own shares, which since the beginning of 2024 have been valued at well over twice the value of shareholders' equity. They are now even approaching x3 equity, their highest valuation in twenty years.

The arbitrage comes as a surprise in light of Jamie Dimon's comments last May, when he deemed share buybacks inappropriate at such high multiples. The bank's charismatic CEO, himself a Wall Street king known for his prudence and sense of timing, has sold a large number of his own shares in the bank this year.