There's a classic scene in "The Big Short" where Mark Baum — Steve Carell's character — looks around a restaurant table in Las Vegas and realizes everyone is drunk on greed. Strippers with five financed properties. Brokers selling toxic waste with a smile on their face. The party seemed like it would never end.
Well. Jamie Dimon has that same Mark Baum look on his face right now.
The Casino Owner Is Nervous
On Monday, during JPMorgan Chase's annual investor update event, Dimon — dressed in black with one hand immobilized in a splint (a cinematic detail even a screenwriter couldn't make up) — let it rip:
"My anxiety is high. I'm not comforted by the fact that asset prices are high. In fact, I think that increases the risk."
Read that again. The CEO of the world's largest bank by market cap is not saying everything's fine. He's saying the exact opposite of what the consensus wants to hear.
While economists are throwing a party over the Trump administration's tax and deregulatory policies, projecting juicy growth for 2026, Dimon did what serious people do: he thought about what could go wrong.
"People are getting way too comfortable with the idea that this is real — these high asset prices, these high volumes — and that we won't have any problems."
Skin in the game. Taleb smiled somewhere.
The Ghost of 2008 in the Room
When veteran analyst Mike Mayo asked about the current environment, Dimon didn't flinch: he compared the moment to the three years leading up to the 2008 crisis.
"Everyone making tons of money, people leveraging up, the sky was the limit."
Damn, that's heavy. This isn't some Twitter blogger talking. This is the guy who's been piloting JPMorgan for two decades, who navigated the 2008 crisis by buying Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual from the wreckage while others were left high and dry.
Dimon said some financial firms are "doing stupid things" — chasing interest income through increasingly risky loans and investments. He didn't name names. He didn't need to.
"You feel stupid when everybody's minting money and everything seems great… it really does feel good," he said. "And then, when I think about all the factors at play, I take a deep breath and say: be careful."
Private Credit Is Already Starting to Crack
And it's not like the signs are merely theoretical. Last week, Blue Owl — one of the private credit giants — rattled the market by announcing it had to sell assets to satisfy investors desperate to pull money out of one of its funds.
The domino effect was immediate: shares of Apollo, KKR, and Blackstone all got dragged down. Observers started asking: has the credit cycle already turned?
Troy Rohrbaugh, co-head of JPMorgan's investment bank, piled on: he said the problem likely wouldn't stay contained to private credit. It would be "broader."
"Right now, it seems isolated to a handful of situations, but that can change easily — and we're prepared for it."
The Surprise Nobody Sees Coming
Dimon touched on a point that's pure gold for anyone who studies cycles: the surprise in a credit cycle never comes from where you're looking.
"In 2008, 2009, nobody expected utility and telecom companies to be affected. This time, it could be software, because of AI."
That's brilliant. While everyone debates whether Nvidia will or won't maintain its stratospheric profits, the real risk might be in the loans that private credit funds made to software companies that artificial intelligence is making obsolete. Anthropic's and OpenAI's models are shaking up entire sectors, and the credit that financed those companies could turn to dust.
The S&P 500 keeps hovering near all-time highs. The music keeps playing.
So — Are You Dancing or Standing Near the Door?
When the CEO of JPMorgan — a guy who has literally billions in skin in the game — says his anxiety is high and compares the scenario to pre-2008, the least a smart investor can do is stop scrolling and think.
It doesn't mean sell everything and stuff cash under the mattress. It means that maybe — just maybe — the time to review your allocation, check the credit quality in your portfolio, and hold a decent cash position is now, before the party's over.
Because as Dimon himself said: the cycle will come. The only question is which confluence of events will set off the bomb.
Do you want to be the guy who takes a deep breath and says "be careful" — or the one who wakes up under the rubble asking "what happened?"
