JPMorgan's Profit Tops Wall Street View

Update includes comments from the conference call and share price changes.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- JPMorgan Chase(JPM) once again succeeded in beating market expectations on Wednesday, reporting a third-quarter profit of $3.6 billion, or 82 cents per share.

The bottom line, driven largely by strong investment banking results, particularly in trading and fixed income, blew out even the highest analyst forecast of 65 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters. The average prediction was 52 cents per share. JPMorgan and other big banks, including Wells Fargo(WFC ), Bank of America(BAC), Citigroup(C) and Goldman Sachs(GS ), beat analysts' wide range of expectations in the first two quarters as well, due to market improvements and a refinancing boom driven by government programs.

Shares of JPMorgan Chase shot up more than 4% in the early morning, hitting a new 52-week high of $47.47 and bolstering other financial stocks as well. The stock most recently was up 3.4% to $47.21. Going into Wednesday's session, JPMorgan's stock was up 30% since its second-quarter report in mid-July.

The news was not all rosy at the giant financial firm though.

Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon noted that credit costs "remain high and are expected to stay elevated for the foreseeable future." The firm added $2 billion to reserves for future consumer credit losses - the same provision as it did in the second quarter - mostly related to consumer lending and card services portfolios.

JPMorgan now has $31.5 billion in reserves, representing 5.3% of total loans. Accordingly, charge-offs climbed sharply to $750 million from $433 million during the second quarter, and nonperforming loans grew by $1.4 billion from the prior period to stand at $4.9 billion at Sept. 30.

"While we are seeing some initial signs of consumer credit stability, we are not yet certain that this trend will continue," Dimon added, in a statement sure to be seized upon by bearish investors.