For the most part, big banks have struck out this earnings season. Across the board, trading revenues have been off due to the lack of a material volume surge catalyst (like Brexit or Trump). Meanwhile, the flattening of the yield curve has weighed on net interest income. Overall, big banks have failed to impress investors this time around. Pretty much all of them have fallen after their quarterly reports.

With one exception. So far, the only big bank to rise this earnings season is Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). The bank reported only moderate declines in trading revenue, while other segments, like wealth management and investment banking, performed quite well during the quarter. MS stock investors were pleasantly surprised.

Morgan Stanley stock is up more than 2% as of this writing.

Clearly, MS stock has distinguished itself from its banking peers this earnings season. Quite simply, Morgan Stanley is performing better than its peers in a subdued trading and low interest rate environment.

But does that make Morgan Stanley stock a buy?

Lets take a closer look.

The Good About Morgan Stanley’s Quarter

Considering how other big banks fared in Q2, Morgan Stanley’s results were quite impressive.

In 2012, Chief Executive Officer James Gorman laid out a plan to de-risk the MS business model. He wanted to cut back on the bond trading business and instead grow the wealth management business. He favored wealth management because it provided a stable income stream to Morgan Stanley.

Since then, the wealth management business has boomed, but the fixed trading business has been a drag. For five years, Morgan Stanley failed to produce $1 billion in quarterly revenue from its bond trading operations.

But fortunes have started to change for MS. Morgan Stanley’s bond trading revenue fell only 4% in the quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS), meanwhile, saw its trading revenue plunge 40%. Declines at other big banks like Citigroup Group Inc (NYSE:C), Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC) and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) ranged from 6% to 19%.

In other words, Morgan Stanley weathered the subdued trading storm much better than its peers.

And that seems to be the new trend. This was the fifth quarter in which MS hit Gorman’s bond trading revenue target. More impressively, it was the second consecutive quarter where Morgan Stanley’s trading revenue was bigger than Goldman Sach’s trading revenue.

Morgan Stanley’s fixed trading business is back on track. All the while, the other business segments continue to boom. The wealth management segment reported its best quarter ever. Revenues rose 9% to $4.2 billion. Profit margins soared to 25%. Net interest income rose an impressive ~20% year-over-year on the back of loan growth and higher interest rates. Investment banking revenues climbed to $1.4 billion from $1.1 billion a year ago.

Overall, Morgan Stanley reported total revenue growth just shy of 7%, pre-tax income growth just over 6%, and earnings-per-share growth of 16%.

Considering the big bank backdrop MS was reporting against, those are pretty good numbers.

The Bad About Morgan Stanley Stock

But MS stock is still hostage to lower-for-longer interest rates.

As I have detailed in a piece about BofA, secular technology trends are working against inflation and thereby also against higher rates. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) has become so large that its low prices are creating a persistently promotional retail environment. Soon this will be spreading to the grocery market as well, and likely other consumer goods markets down the road. This pricing dynamic continues to depress consumer goods prices, and keep inflation low.

Meanwhile, although the job market is full right now, job-replacing technologies such as automation and artificial technology threaten huge swaths of the labor market. With cost-cutting being emphasized over risk-taking (largely due to the Amazon effect), the implementation of these job-replacing technologies isn’t a matter of if, but rather a matter of when. Thus, the full job market seems temporary at best.

Bottom Line on MS Stock

Together, Amazon and job-replacing technologies are working against inflation. Without inflation, rates won’t go higher. Without higher rates, big banks will continue to struggle with making big money.

The problem is that MS stock is still priced for higher interest rates at some point in time. MS stock is up more than 35% since Donald Trump was elected President. Why? Because investors expected two things: deregulation and higher interest rates.

One of those isn’t going to happen, but Morgan Stanley stock remains on top of the world as if both were going to happen. That makes MS stock a risky place to be right now.

Great quarter. Bad stock. Big banks are hostage to a lower-for-longer interest rate environment, and Morgan Stanley stock is no exception.

As of this writing, Luke Lango was long AMZN.