JPMorgan 'Confessions' Fall on Deaf Ears
"Former Brokers Say JPMorgan(JPM) Favored Selling Bank's Own Funds Over Others."
The Times was, to borrow from Casablanca's Captain Renault, shocked, shocked to find that banks favor selling more profitable in-house products over those put out by competitors.
A story that has legs manages to surprise and redefine. Does this story rise to that standard? Hardly. In fact, it dressed up the widely known as revelation. As a result, it was highly overplayed.
Since time immemorial, financial service firms have pushed more profitable in-house products, even when they weren't the best-performing. Ethically, this is skeevy. But it's not illegal, as the quality of a product is very much subjective and open to some degree of interpretation.
Moreover, as a trader, you need to get a bead on whether this will be the next scandal to fell Wall Street firms. The answer is a resounding no. As longtime readers know, there are a million reasons to be weary of financial firms like Citigroup(C) , Bank of America(BAC) and Morgan Stanley(MS) , quite a few involving malpractices.
But pushing in-house products, a business practice on Wall Street as old as commerce itself, is not one of them. With apologies to the hyperventilating media, you can actually relax on this one.