Morgan Stanley’s supposed to shine in stock trading. It’s tradition.
But like the Winter Hill Gang elbowing their way into the Angiulos’ Boston vending machine routes ca. 1975, Goldman managed to muscle Morgan out of position in recent years, a blow to the latter’s pride.
Not that Morgan’s traders weren’t doing well. They had their best Q2 ever in 2025. But it’s a contest. With Goldman.
So it was probably with more than a little satisfaction that Ted Pick said his boys got the better of David Solomon’s in Q3. Equities trading revenue at Morgan was $4.12 billion, the firm said Wednesday. That was way ahead of consensus, better than Goldman’s haul and, most importantly, up 35% YoY.
As the figure shows, Morgan gets bragging rights for the largest YoY increase in equities trading revenue for Q3 of 2025. Congratulations.
For what it’s worth — billions, technically — FICC beat too. Revenue there for Morgan was $2.17 billion against $2.05 billion expected.
Consistent with the “IB’s back” theme which defined Q3 results Street-wide, IB revenue at Morgan was the strongest since Q4 of 2021, rising 44% to $2.1 billion. The record at Morgan is $2.85 billion, notched in Q3 of 2021 amid a veritable advisory bonanza.
The figure above shows you the breakdown. It looks a lot like every other IB chart I’ve drawn this reporting season.
In the wealth business — which is crucial for the firm — revenue rose 13% to $8.23 billion, easily ahead of the $7.78 billion estimate. The pre-tax margin in that business — another key line item for Morgan — was 30.3%. The firm has some lofty goals for wealth management which they may not ultimately hit this year, but there’s no point going into the specifics. Nobody outside of shareholders and bank analysts cares about that.
Comp costs were high at Morgan as they were for Goldman in Q3, but all in all, it was a good quarter. The top-line beat at Morgan was $1.6 billion ($18.2 billion versus $16.6 billion expected). The firm’s provision for credit losses was — wait for it — $0.
