Jamie Dimon Says He Wouldn't Buy Stocks or Long-Term Treasurys Right Now

Jamie Dimon isn't buying what the market is selling. Literally.

In an hourlong interview with Wilfred Frost released Monday on "The Master Investor Podcast," the JPMorgan Chase CEO said he wouldn't purchase either stocks or long-dated U.S. Treasurys at their current prices, according to CNBC. His reasoning: investors are underestimating a stack of risks that keeps getting taller.

"I do think those risks are probably bigger than other people think," Dimon said, according to CNBC. He pointed to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, escalating U.S.-China tensions, and rising military spending at a time of mounting government deficits.

Asked whether markets are underpricing a major shock, Dimon didn't pretend to have a clean answer. "It's possible something's baked in, but what's not baked in is what actually happens," he said. It's an admission that nobody, including the head of the largest bank in America by market cap, can price geopolitical surprise with precision.

The Deficit Warning

Dimon often warns the public about the economic risks he sees, according to CNBC, and he did it again here. He believes persistent U.S. budget deficits will eventually force a reckoning, and that so-called bond vigilantes, investors who demand higher yields to keep financing government debt, will push interest rates up.

"My view is it will become a problem," he told Frost, per CNBC.

He put a number on it too. Even if inflation cools all the way back to the Federal Reserve's 2% target, Dimon said the 10-year Treasury yield "should probably be at 4% to 4.5%." That's his way of saying he sees little room for Treasury prices to climb from here, since bond prices move opposite to yields. Asked directly if he'd buy long-dated Treasurys personally, he said: "Personally, no."

This is a genuine concern from the head of the country's largest bank, not fringe talk. Dimon isn't inventing a problem out of nowhere. He's pointing at deficits and rising military spending as pressures Washington hasn't resolved.

Stocks Aren't Off the Hook Either

Dimon extended the same skepticism to equities. He said he'd consider buying an individual stock if it was "a great investment," but he wouldn't buy the broader market at current valuations, according to CNBC.

That view sits uncomfortably next to the actual numbers. The S&P 500 has returned nearly 10% this year, per CNBC, with consumers still spending, inflation moderating, and investors piling into the artificial intelligence trade. JPMorgan itself just posted blockbuster quarterly results last week, powered by surging trading and investment banking revenue, reinforcing the narrative that the U.S. economy has weathered recent geopolitical turmoil better than many expected.

Dimon is warning against the very market conditions that just made his own bank a pile of money. A CEO can separate what's profitable for JPMorgan right now from what he thinks is a smart personal bet on where prices go from here.

Resilience With an Asterisk

Dimon did concede that the global economy has gotten more resilient, largely because of lower energy dependence than in past decades. But he added a caveat: resilience isn't invincibility.

"You may need more straws in the camel's back to cause that tipping point," he said, according to CNBC. "Even this current war starting up again, maybe that's not enough to do it."

He also struck a measured tone on artificial intelligence, comparing today's spending boom to the early days of the internet. "The amount of money being spent is huge. Will it in total pay off? Probably, just like the internet did," Dimon said, according to CNBC. He noted that during the internet boom, early players like Yahoo and Netscape faded while eventual winners such as Google and Facebook emerged later. "Will it pay off the way you expect and the timetable you expect? Definitely not," he said.

The Bottom Line

Dimon isn't calling a crash. He's not saying sell everything. He's saying the price you'd pay today for stocks or long Treasurys doesn't match the risk he sees on the table, and that markets have a habit of ignoring slow-moving problems like deficits until they can't anymore.

Dimon often warns publicly about risks like these, according to CNBC, and his latest comments contrast with investors' recent willingness to look past wars, tariffs and other shocks. The open question isn't whether risks exist. Deficits, wars, and China tensions are all real. It's whether this is the cycle where they finally get priced in, or another one where the market keeps proving the skeptics wrong a while longer.