JPMorgan's Dimon Leaves Shareholders Hanging

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon answered plenty of questions on the bank's trading loss in his testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, but shareholders were still left hanging on the one question that really matters to them.

What is the ultimate size of the trading loss?

Estimates by some analysts now top $5 billion, according to press reports, but the CEO refused to comment on details about the size of the trades and how they were being unwound in Senate testimony, saying it would compromise the bank's interests.

While Dimon will testify before the House again on June 19, shareholders may have to wait until the bank reports its results on July 13 to get answers to their multi-billion dollar question.

Still, shares of the bank were up more than 2% on Wednesday following his testimony despite broad market weakness, a sign that shareholders have still not lost their faith in the bank or in Dimon's ability to steer it out of its mess.

"While there are still two weeks left in our second quarter, we expect our quarter to be solidly profitable," Dimon said in his prepared testimony, as he reiterated that the size of the loss did not affect the bank's capital position and hurt neither clients nor taxpayers.

The CEO said in an interview to CNBC following his testimony that the bank will disclose what the trading losses were "for the quarter" when it reports next month. JPMorgan will also offer more details on "what risk remains."

"We said in testimony we are going to be solidly profitable this quarter. We will be solidly profitable in the third and fourth quarter too, unless something else goes wrong, but it won't be because of this[CIO trading loss] that we are not solidly profitable," he told CNBC.

JPMorgan is usually the first to kick off bank earnings season and often sets the bar for other banks' performance.

This time would be no different as investors focus on how the bank navigated the capital markets as macro-economic conditions once again turned adverse in the wake of Europe's ongoing turmoil.

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