Key Insights

• Institutions' substantial holdings in JPMorgan Chase implies that they have significant influence over the company's share price

• A total of 25 investors have a majority stake in the company with 45% ownership

• Ownership research along with analyst forecasts data help provide a good understanding of opportunities in a stock

To get a sense of who is truly in control of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM), it is important to understand the ownership structure of the business. The group holding the most number of shares in the company, around 74% to be precise, is institutions. In other words, the group stands to gain the most (or lose the most) from their investment into the company.

Since institutional have access to huge amounts of capital, their market moves tend to receive a lot of scrutiny by retail or individual investors. Therefore, a good portion of institutional money invested in the company is usually a huge vote of confidence on its future.

In the chart below, we zoom in on the different ownership groups of JPMorgan Chase.

View our latest analysis for JPMorgan Chase

What Does The Institutional Ownership Tell Us About JPMorgan Chase?

Institutional investors commonly compare their own returns to the returns of a commonly followed index. So they generally do consider buying larger companies that are included in the relevant benchmark index.

JPMorgan Chase already has institutions on the share registry. Indeed, they own a respectable stake in the company. This implies the analysts working for those institutions have looked at the stock and they like it. But just like anyone else, they could be wrong. If multiple institutions change their view on a stock at the same time, you could see the share price drop fast. It's therefore worth looking at JPMorgan Chase's earnings history below. Of course, the future is what really matters.

Since institutional investors own more than half the issued stock, the board will likely have to pay attention to their preferences. Hedge funds don't have many shares in JPMorgan Chase. The Vanguard Group, Inc. is currently the company's largest shareholder with 9.7% of shares outstanding. For context, the second largest shareholder holds about 7.2% of the shares outstanding, followed by an ownership of 4.5% by the third-largest shareholder.

A deeper look at our ownership data shows that the top 25 shareholders collectively hold less than half of the register, suggesting a large group of small holders where no single shareholder has a majority.

While studying institutional ownership for a company can add value to your research, it is also a good practice to research analyst recommendations to get a deeper understand of a stock's expected performance. There are a reasonable number of analysts covering the stock, so it might be useful to find out their aggregate view on the future.