JPM Preview: Various Wild Cards in Play

JPMorgan Chase (JPM Quote) will kick off a slew of financial company reports this week.

The analyst community expects JPMorgan to report a loss of 17 cents per share on net revenue of $16.01 billion. In the year-ago quarter, the company earned a profit of 97 cents per share on revenue of $16.11 billion.

Frankly, these estimates are not worth the paper they are written on. So much has taken place for JPMorgan and the industry that forecasting results for the quarter are virtually impossible. You might as well go to a psychic to get an estimate for the money center and investment banks.

Here is what we need to be focused on for the quarter:

• There is no telling how much the impact could be from the write-offs and impairments in the credit-trading books.
• Credit card and loan losses and provisions should be on the rise.
• What will the impact be from the acquisitions of Bear Stearns and the Washington Mutual retail network?
• And what will the impact be from capital-raising activities, including those announced by the U.S. Treasury today?

Everything I listed above is a wildcard issue. I do believe that JPMorgan is going to come out of the current credit crisis as a stronger company than many of its peers (whichever ones may still be standing). The conference call will be one in which to gather information for the future rather than one in which to reflect on the past.