I wonder what they were/are shorting? It says below "basically liquid indexes", but what I wonder, they must have strongly felt that the markets were gonna decline further, to retain this large short position? I wonder if they have an existing short on the TSX Venture exchange, where we trade as well as many hundreds of other gold juniors?

JPMorgan ended synthetic trading at the chief investment office and transferred the rest of the position to the investment bank, executives said last month. The CIO retained an $11 billion short position in “basically liquid indexes” to hedge other credit assets, Dimon said during a July 13 meeting with analysts. Positions in Series 9 of the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index, a credit-swaps benchmark known as IG9 that’s at the heart of much of the loss, were cut by 70 percent, he said.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-08-09/jpmorgan-probes-expand-to-at-least-11-agencies