Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, sought yesterday to ease market jitters over China, urging investors to focus on the “pretty good” US economy as well as the “winners” from a collapse in commodities.

Bank stocks have been particularly hard hit in the 2016 market sell-off, which has been exacerbated by wild swings in Chinese markets and mounting fears over the effects of a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy.

But Mr Dimon, chairman and chief executive of the largest US bank by assets, tried to dispel anxieties as he played his traditional role of kicking off the sector's fourth-quarter earnings season.

The economy “l(fā)ooks pretty good at this point”, he said, adding that millions of employed Americans did not care at all about “turmoil” in world markets.

“If you have commodity prices go down like that, you get big winners and losers...Brazil gets hurt, India benefits, South Korea benefits, Japan benefits, and those kind of trickling waters,” he said. “Hopefully, this will all settle down and it’s not the beginning of something really bad.”

He maintained his sunny tone as he discussed a 10 per cent rise in the bank’s net profit for the quarter, after cost cuts compensated for sluggish results in investment banking and a near-50 per cent jump in provisions for bad loans.

JPMorgan is often seen as a barometer for an industry still grappling with tougher post-crisis regulation, patchy client activity and ultra-low interest rates.

By that token, the results were encouraging, showing a slight lift in net revenues across the group and a 7 per cent fall in non-interest expenses, thanks largely to lower pay in the trading division and a drop in legal costs.

Net income came to $5.4bn, or $1.32 a share, beating analysts’ expectations. JPMorgan shares were up about 2.5 per cent in early New York trading, paring a loss for the year to about 11 per cent.