JPMorgan Chase Q3 2026 Earnings: The $5.57 Miss, a $664 Million Buyback, and a Raised Outlook

On October 13, 2026, JPMorgan Chase reported third-quarter net income of $15.3 billion, or $5.57 per share — a rare miss against consensus of about $5.90, even though revenue grew 8% and net interest income jumped 13%. The same quarter that missed also cut net share repurchases from $6.2 billion to $664 million and raised the 2026 net interest income outlook to $106.2 billion. A miss, a buyback cut, and a raised guide do not usually arrive together; the ledger shows why they did.

The Headline Numbers​

JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s fiscal year is the calendar year; Q3 2026 ended September 30, 2026. Every figure below comes from the Form 8-K and the earnings release with its financial supplement — no Form 10-Q for the quarter had been filed as of October 19, so the 8-K exhibits are the primary source. Revenue is stated on a reported (GAAP) basis; the bank's headline $50.9 billion is the managed-basis equivalent, which adds a $735 million taxable-equivalent adjustment.

The miss has a mechanical anatomy. Start with the $658 million of net investment securities losses sitting in Corporate — $498 million after tax, or $0.18 of EPS. Add them back and EPS is $5.75, still short of the roughly $5.90 consensus reported at the time. The rest of the gap is the operating kind: expenses grew 12.4% against revenue growth of 8.1%, and Fixed Income Markets fell 4% while the equities boom did the carrying. Nothing in the quarter is broken — net income still grew 6.3% — but nothing in it exceeded what was already priced in, either.

The sequential comparison deserves a warning label, not a conclusion. Revenue fell 12.5% and net income 27.7% from Q2, but Q2 held a $4.6 billion Visa gain plus $1.0 billion of equity-investment gains that turned $57.3 billion of revenue into $21.2 billion of net income. That was the quarter to beat on paper; this is the quarter that shows the run rate underneath it.

Revenue Deep Dive​

Segment detail comes from the earnings release and is stated on a managed basis; the four segments sum to $50,907M against $50,172M reported. The thesis this quarter is balance-sheet growth funding everything else: average loans up 10% year over year to $1.6 trillion and average deposits up 8% to $2.7 trillion, with the Commercial & Investment Bank (+14.4%) and Asset & Wealth Management (+13.9%) growing double digits alongside 8.7% growth in Consumer & Community Banking.

The Commercial & Investment Bank is 44.7% of managed revenue and the quarter's engine. Inside its $22.7 billion, Banking & Payments grew 16% to $11.0 billion — investment banking revenue up 15% to $3.1 billion on higher advisory fees, Payments up 14% to $5.6 billion on higher deposit balances and fee growth, and Lending up 20% to $2.2 billion on lower hedge losses and higher loan balances. Markets & Securities Services grew 13% to $11.8 billion, but the mix is the story: Equity Markets surged 49% to $5.0 billion on strength "across products, particularly in Prime and Derivatives," while Fixed Income Markets fell 4% to $5.4 billion on lower revenue in Commodities, Rates, Credit and Public Finance. The bank kept its #1 global investment banking fee ranking with 9.2% wallet share year to date.

Consumer & Community Banking grew 9% to $21.2 billion with a 36% return on equity. Card Services & Auto did the work, up 15% to $8.3 billion on higher card net interest income and higher auto operating lease income; Banking & Wealth Management added 6% to $11.7 billion on asset management fees and deposit balances, while Home Lending slipped 3% on lower production revenue. This is where management's demand language lives: Dimon said "growth continued to be robust in Card, with strong demand for our set of products," and the ledger-adjacent evidence agrees — card sales volume up 10% year over year, 650,000-plus net new checking accounts, and the #1 U.S. retail deposit rank for the sixth straight year.

Asset & Wealth Management grew 14% to $6.9 billion at a 45% ROE, driven by management fees on higher market levels and $263 billion of client asset net inflows. Assets under management reached $5.2 trillion, up 13%; client assets hit $7.9 trillion, up 15%. Corporate collapsed to $93 million because it holds the $658 million of securities losses against a $105 million gain a year earlier — the segment is a plug for treasury items, and this quarter the plug is the story.

The Margin Story​

Expenses growing faster than revenue is the margin story in one line: noninterest expense up 12.4% against revenue up 8.1% leaves no operating leverage, and the managed overhead ratio sits at 54%, up from 52% a year ago. The release attributes the increase to compensation — revenue-related pay plus more front-office staff — alongside brokerage expense, distribution fees, marketing, and technology. Pricing language, such as a bank has any, points the same way costs do: "higher deposit margin" in Payments and Securities Services, "higher net yield" in Card, where the net revenue rate reached 10.76 against 10.03 a year ago. The bank is earning more per dollar of balances; it is also spending more per dollar of revenue.

The 30.5% quarterly margin sits just below last year's 31.0% for the same quarter, and excluding the securities losses it would be 31.5% — essentially on trend. That is the sense in which the miss is benign: the margin machinery is intact, and the quarter's shortfall came from a discretionary treasury realization plus a soft FICC print, not from compression in the core spread business. Net interest income excluding Markets grew 6% to $24.7 billion on balances, "partially offset by the impact of lower rates" — the rate headwind is real but being outgrown for now.

The One Big Question: Why did buybacks fall 90% while the outlook rose?​

The defining tension of the quarter is capital, not earnings. Net share repurchases fell from $6.2 billion in Q2 to $664 million — a cut of nearly 90% — while management simultaneously raised the 2026 net interest income outlook to about $106.2 billion and sketched a preliminary 2027 central case of about $107 billion excluding Markets. Dimon's explanation was the capital hierarchy: "investing in the franchise and supporting our clients at the top," adding "we believe we can deploy this capital over time at very attractive returns for our shareholders." The balance sheet says what that means in practice.

CET1 capital barely moved — $303 billion to $304 billion — while risk-weighted assets grew $52 billion in one quarter on the same loan growth that lifted NII. At the same time, accumulated other comprehensive losses widened by $12.1 billion as rising rates marked the securities book down; with $5.1 billion of dividends and repurchases on top, total stockholders' equity actually fell $2.2 billion quarter over quarter despite $15.3 billion of net income. The standardized CET1 ratio slipped nearly a full point year over year, from 14.8% to 13.9%. Buybacks were not cut because the bank is short of capital — 13.9% remains formidable — but because balance-sheet growth and rate marks are consuming it faster than earnings replace it. That is exactly when a bank should throttle repurchases, and exactly what the "fortress" framing exists to make routine.

The trading peer comparison sharpens the quarter's other question. JPMorgan was not alone in living on equities while fixed income dragged — Jefferies, two weeks earlier, posted record equities trading up 29% against fixed income down 26% on "ongoing lower industry volumes." The regime is the same at both houses; JPMorgan simply outperformed it on both sides, +49% to $5.0 billion in equities and only −4% in FICC. When every bank's quarter has the same shape, the shape is the market's — and next quarter the test is whether FICC mean-reverts or the equities dependence deepens.

Tracking a $50.2B quarter in plain text​

Double-entry forces every dollar to reconcile, which is why the Beancount ledger is the audit — and how we model every company explains the conventions this file follows. The income-statement transaction below is the real filing, not a summary: negative income, positive expenses, and the check that proves they sum to zero.

; Check: (-50172) + 2743 + 27295 + 4829 + 15305 = 0
 
2026-09-30 * "JPMorgan Chase & Co." "FY2026Q3 Income Statement"
  Income:Revenue                             -50172 MUSD  ; total net revenue as reported (NII 27,036 + noninterest revenue 23,136, incl. $658M investment securities losses)
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                       2743 MUSD  ; provision for credit losses ($2,204M net charge-offs + $539M net reserve build)
  Expenses:OperatingExpenses                   27295 MUSD  ; total noninterest expense
  Expenses:IncomeTax                            4829 MUSD  ; income tax expense
  Equity:Adjustments                           15305 MUSD  ; net income offset (retained earnings set by balance assertion)

That block is not an illustration; it is the period that was validated and pushed to open_ledger/jpmorgan-chase, where assets of $5,091,545M equal liabilities of $4,719,177M plus equity of $372,368M to the million. The one balance-sheet number that tells the narrative is the allowance line set against loan growth: gross loans up 10.4% year over year to $1,584,641M while the allowance for loan losses sits at $26,272M, up just 2.1% — and the provision fell 19.4% as net charge-offs dropped 15% to $2,204M. Credit is improving into growth, which is also why the Card Services net charge-off rate falling to 2.91% from 3.34% last quarter matters more than any single revenue line.

The Multi-Year Arc​

The compounding story is the balance sheet becoming the income statement. Gross loans grew 47% from $1.08 trillion at the end of FY2021 to $1.58 trillion now, and net interest income nearly doubled across the same span — from $52.3 billion in FY2021 to $95.4 billion in FY2025, with 2026 implied at about $106.2 billion. FY2021's 39.7% margin is the outlier to discount, built on reserve releases; the 29–33% band since is the franchise earning its spread. Q3's 30.5% sits inside that band even with the miss, which is the bull case in one row: the earnings power survived the quarter that disappointed.

The Verdict: Bull vs. Bear​

Bull Case

• Net interest income (+12.8%) is compounding on 10% loan growth with the 2026 outlook raised to $106.2B and a preliminary 2027 case of $107B excluding Markets.
• "Robust" Card demand is confirmed by balances, not just words: card sales volume +10%, net revenue rate 10.76 vs 10.03, and the charge-off rate improving to 2.91%.
• Credit costs fell 19.4% — $2,204M of net charge-offs plus a $539M reserve build concentrated in Wholesale, not a consumer deterioration.
• Equities revenue (+49%) with the #1 global IB fee ranking shows share gains inside a mixed capital-markets regime, outperforming Jefferies' +29% on both sides of the trading book.
• The buyback cut preserves a 13.9% CET1 ratio while RWA absorbs growth — capital discipline now funds deployment "at very attractive returns" later.

Bear Case

• $5.57 missed even the $5.75 ex-items figure's distance to consensus — and the signals management cites (deposit margin, card yield) do not yet cover a 12.4% expense growth rate running ahead of 8.1% revenue growth.
• Fixed Income Markets (−4%) missed while equities carried the quarter; a trading result this concentrated reverses the moment volatility normalizes.
• AOCI widened $12.1B in one quarter and equity fell despite $15.3B of profit — rising rates are marking the fortress, and Dimon's own list (deficits, sticky inflation, elevated asset prices, geopolitics) is the caution to take literally.
• Corporate's $658M of "discretionary" securities losses raise the question of what else in the $821.8B securities book gets realized, and when.
• The 2027 $107B NII case assumes "higher rates" that the same rate move marking AOCI may not deliver to net interest margin.

Our Take: The miss is real but the franchise printed through it: 13% NII growth, improving credit, and a raised guide are worth more than the $0.18 of discretionary securities losses that explain a third of the EPS gap. The buyback cut is the quarter's most bullish datapoint disguised as a cautious one — a bank throttling repurchases to fund 10% loan growth at a 13.9% CET1 ratio is allocating, not retreating. Hold JPMorgan to the expense line next quarter: if 12% cost growth persists after revenue normalizes, the operating-leverage story breaks and so does the multiple.