Dimon: 'Guessing at market tops, market bottoms, that is a complete loser's game'
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon says it's a "loser's game" to try to time the peaks and troughs of the stock market.
"Investing should be a permanent thing. Save, invest. Save, invest. Guessing at market tops, market bottoms – that is a complete loser's game. I've never seen anyone win at it. The smartest investor in the world, Warren Buffett, would say that is not the way to invest," Dimon said on a client webcast on Wednesday.
The long-time bank CEO said his advice is to "make investments, be very thoughtful about what you're doing, think through your retirement needs and all those kinds of things, and everyone needs a little help doing that."
Dimon, who pointed out that he hates forecasting the stock market, said a "booming economy will justify today's prices." The bank CEO said there "are bubbles out there," but he declined to mention any names.
"I'm not surprised. I've never seen anywhere in the world that you don't have bubbles and stuff like that take place. People speculate, and I don't know why," Dimon said, referencing the line from the film Casablanca where Captain Louis Renault says he's "shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on in here."
While he didn't want to "comment too much on stocks," Dimon doesn't see a correction anytime soon, pointing to the euphoria of growth and people returning to work.
That said, he cautioned that "markets tend to surprise."
The worst-case scenario at the moment for the market would be "inflation going up much faster than people think," Dimon said. "The Fed moving faster than people think, and that would surprise people and I guarantee you, stock prices would be too high if that happened."
On the webcast, Dimon echoed his upbeat views on the U.S. economy that he recently outlined in his annual letter to JPMorgan shareholders where predicted an economic boom that "could easily run into 2023."
Julia La Roche is a correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.
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