JP Morgan Chase said Wednesday that its profit surged to $3.6 billion in the third-quarter from strong trading results and a flurry of new deals, strengthening its position as one of the dominant banks to emerge from the financial crisis. Profit in JPMorgan’s investment banking business more than doubled from a year ago as it pulled in higher fees and increased its profits from fixed-income markets. But losses on credit cards and mortgages weighed down the bank as consumers continued to fall behind on their loans.

The bank’s results seemed to light a fire under Wall Street, where futures surged ahead of the opening bell. The Dow was poised to open more than 120 points higher. The results reflected the broader rebound in once-stymied financial markets, where companies are again issuing stock, raising money from bond markets and signing merger deals.

After being forced to take huge write-downs on the value of its investment-banking assets a year ago, the bank said the value of some of those assets increased in the third quarter. JPMorgan also benefited from revenue gains from the branches scooped up in the takeover last fall of Washington Mutual.

Although the recession weighed heavily on its businesses, JPMorgan appears to be taking advantage of the financial crisis to leapfrog over rivals in the investment banking rankings and expand its consumer lending franchise. It added another $2 billion to its consumer credit reserves for future losses and still dwarfed analysts’ expectations of earnings of 51 cents a share. JPMorgan said net income rose to 82 cents a share from 9 cents a share in the third quarter of 2008. Revenues grew to $28.8 billion compared with $16.1 billion from the quarter a year ago. “The revenue growth was very impressive,” said Anthony Polini, an analyst at Raymond James & Associates. “They’re benefiting from a turn in the economy and they’re asserting their dominance.”

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