Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Seeking Alpha: Greatness Recognized With JPMorgan Shares

Up another 10% from my last article and significantly outperforming peers like Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Citi (NYSE:C), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), and U.S. Bancorp (NYSE:USB) over the past year, there's not much I can complain about as a JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM) shareholder. Management is delivering on its stated objectives of cutting expenses and strategically shrinking its balance sheet, while continuing to pursue growth opportunities in asset management, cards, and commercial/middle market banking.

The Street is pretty much up to speed on this story; an argument could perhaps be made that some still underestimate JPMorgan's ability to offset increased capital requirements by optimizing its cost structure and/or redirecting capital to less-heavily regulated businesses, but I think the shares are pretty fairly valued. What's a bank stock investor to do, though? You can pay up for growth if you like (Bank of the Ozarks (NASDAQ:OZRK) being my go-to example) or try a riskier story like Canadian Western (OTCPK:CBWBF), Itau Unibanco (NYSE:ITUB), or Popular (NASDAQ:BPOP), or you can accept that banks like JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and U.S. Bancorp are priced to generate the sort of more modest returns that were typical before things went nuts with the housing bubble, recession, and recovery.

Read the full article here:
Greatness Recognized With JPMorgan Shares

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