WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co said he should have caught the "London whale" derivatives trades that resulted in a multibillion-dollar loss for the bank.

"We made a stupid error," Jamie Dimon told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington on Wednesday. "I should have caught it ... I didn't."

So far, JPMorgan has estimated its total trading loss at $5.8 billion. The losses stemmed from a London-based trader known as the "London whale" who took large positions in credit derivatives.

(Reporting By Sarah N. Lynch; editing by John Wallace)