Morgan Stanley (MS)

People doubted bitcoin for years. Then Wall Street rushed to get in, and it made bitcoin’s price soar. This same exact process is about to play out again with blockchain.

7 Undervalued Stocks to Buy Now

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Dec 9, 2020

Everyone is on the hunt for undervalued stocks. Keep in mind, even more highly valued stocks can be undervalued. Let's look at seven of them.

4 Top Stock Trades for Thursday: NIO, UAL, BIDU, MS

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Oct 14, 2020

Nio, United Airlines, Morgan Stanley and Baidu were our top stock trades for Thursday. That said, let's look at a few charts now.

Morgan Stanley Earnings: MS Stock Jumps 2% on Better-Than-Expected Q2

By William White, InvestorPlace Writer Jul 16, 2020

Morgan Stanley (MS) earnings for the financial company's second quarter of the year have MS stock heading higher on Thursday.

4 Top Stock Trades for Friday: MS, SHOP, RAD, SNAP

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Apr 16, 2020

Morgan Stanley, Shopify, Snap and Rite Aid were our top stock trades for Friday. That said, here's a look at the charts now.

Stock Market Today: New Records for Amazon, Netflix

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Apr 16, 2020

Jobless claims data continues to paint an uninspiring outlook on the U.S. economy. Here's what happened in the stock market today.

Wells Fargo Stock Now Sits at Multi-Year Support Levels

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Mar 9, 2020

Wells Fargo has underperformed its peers and yields 5%. But that doesn't make WFC stock a must-buy name right now.

3 Bank Stocks to Buy Contrarians Should Consider

By Laura Hoy, InvestorPlace Contributor Mar 9, 2020

PNC, JPM and MS are all bank stocks to buy amid economic chaos and coronavirus concerns

Morgan Stanley’s Fintech Surrender Continues With E*Trade Buy

By Dana Blankenhorn, InvestorPlace Contributor Feb 24, 2020

Discount brokers like E*Trade, which Morgan Stanley is buying for $13 billion, are taking over Wall Street. It's not the other way around.

E*Trade (ETFC) Stock Soars 23% on $13 Billion Morgan Stanley Deal

By William White, InvestorPlace Writer Feb 20, 2020

E*Trade (ETFC) stock is on the rise Thursday after announcing a massive $13 billion deal combining it with Morgan Stanley (MS).

The 3 Best Bank Stocks to Buy After Earnings

By Chris Markoch Jan 22, 2020

Many big banks reported earnings last week. There were some winners and losers, but these three bank stocks stood out the most.

Stock Market Today: Morgan Stanley’s Blowout; Microsoft Going Green

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Jan 16, 2020

Tesla shares slipped on Thursday, while Signet and Morgan Stanley ripped. Here's what else happened in the stock market today.

Morgan Stanley Earnings: MS Stock Surges 7% on Impressive Q4

By William White, InvestorPlace Writer Jan 16, 2020

Morgan Stanley (MS) earnings for the financial company's fourth quarter of 2019 have MS stock taking off Thursday on positive results.

6 Mega Bank Stocks to Watch Ahead of Earnings

By William Roth, InvestorPlace Market Strategist Jan 13, 2020

A number of bank stocks are set to kick things off this week, providing a view into the health of the economy.

Stock Market Today: China Troubles?; Double-Double Upgrade

By Bret Kenwell, InvestorPlace Contributor Dec 9, 2019

Tensions with China are keeping investors cautious as we creep toward the end of the year. Here's what happened in the stock market today.

4 Bank Stocks to Buy That Are Breaking Out

By Tyler Craig, Tales of a Technician Nov 25, 2019

Bank stocks boast some of the best setups into the new week. Here are the best breakout stocks to buy in the space.

Cars Keep Getting Pricier and the Commodity Boom Makes It Worse

From Yahoo Finance May 8, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Cars are back in vogue courtesy of the pandemic. They’re also getting more expensive, thanks in part to surging commodity prices.Many of the essential ingredients for automakers, such as copper, steel and aluminum, are hitting or approaching record highs this year as the lagging supply can’t keep up with stimulus-driven demand. The Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index jumped to its highest since 2011, with metals up 21% so far this year.Should the current rally morph into a supercycle, rising car prices could forebode inflation across the board. Analysts at JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimate the price of an auto’s raw materials have climbed 83% in the year through March. Those pieces typically make up about 10% of the cost of building a vehicle, meaning the price tag for a $40,000 car would have to increase 8.3% to offset the rally, analysts for the bank wrote.“We’re definitely feeling the commodity headwind,” Jim Farley, chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co., said last week. “We’re seeing inflation in a variety of parts of our industry, kind of in ways we haven’t seen for many years.”Carmakers usually struggle to pass on higher costs, but demand is booming as major economies reopen and many consumers continue avoiding public transportation. The global semiconductor shortage also is inhibiting production, keeping inventory tight and driving up vehicle prices.In the U.S., car supply is so limited that rental companies are resorting to buying used vehicles at auction rather than new ones.The main contributor to higher commodity costs hitting the industry is the steel needed for chassis, engines and wheels. The metal’s recent rally has smashed records as China -- by far the biggest producer -- took measures to curb output.The boom in copper prices adds to the costs of electric vehicles just as the industry implements an energy transformation to meet tighter emissions standards. EVs use nearly 3 1/2 times more copper than gas guzzlers because of the larger amount of wiring inside, according to consultancy Wood Mackenzie Ltd.The increases may hurt automakers like Tesla Inc. and Volkswagen AG that are trying to make EVs more price-competitive with traditional cars.They also may encourage automakers to explore alternative chemistries for their EV batteries. The majority of cells use some combination of lithium, cobalt and nickel, which have jumped a minimum of 47% each in the past 12 months.Ford and BMW AG were among those investing $130 million this month in battery startup Solid Power Inc., which is working on cells that would remove the need for those metals, leading to a 10-fold decline in power pack costs.“They are looking to spread that risk,” said Caspar Rawles, head of price and data assessments at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. “There is no hedging for lithium or cobalt.”BMW expects headwinds from rising commodity prices of as much as 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) for the year, Chief Financial Officer Nicolas Peter said Friday during an earnings briefing. The luxury-car maker singled out rhodium, steel and palladium as particular worries in the coming months.Longer term, BMW is working to be less exposed to price squeezes in key raw materials. From 2025, the automaker plans to produce vehicles on a new architecture that will allow recycling of materials such as steel, aluminum and plastics to make new cars.“We’re seeking partnerships” to refine the necessary technologies, BMW CEO Oliver Zipse said.Jeep maker Stellantis NV -- formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and PSA Group –- said it needed to recover some of its higher costs, and the marketplace is supportive, so far.“It’s hard to imagine a better environment with which to pass through the impact of supply shock and price inflation to consumers who are effectively lining up to take delivery of their new car off the car carrier,” analysts at Morgan Stanley wrote in a note. “It’s a seller’s market in autos.”For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

4 Companies Open for Trading

From Barron's May 7, 2021

Waterdrop, Talaris Therapeutics, Anebulo Pharmaceuticals and Bowman Consulting Group are making their public equities market debuts on Friday.

Wall Street Giants Get Swept Up by India’s Brutal Covid Wave

From Yahoo Finance May 7, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- About 8,300 miles east of Wall Street, on a stretch of Bangalore’s Outer Ring Road, sits what was once the heart of the global financial industry’s back office.Before the pandemic, this cluster of glass-and-steel towers housed thousands of employees at firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and UBS Group AG who played critical roles in everything from risk management to customer service and compliance.Now the buildings are eerily empty. And with case counts soaring across Bangalore and much of India, work-from-home arrangements that have sustained Wall Street’s back-office operations for months are coming under intense strain. A growing number of employees are either sick or scrambling to find critical medical supplies such as oxygen for relatives or friends.Standard Chartered Plc said last week that about 800 of its 20,000 staffers in India were infected. As many as 25% of employees in some teams at UBS are absent, said an executive at the firm who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job. At Wells Fargo & Co.’s offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad, work on co-branded cards, balance transfers and reward programs is running behind schedule, an executive said.While banks have so far avoided major disruptions by shifting tasks to other offshore hubs, India’s Covid crisis has exposed a little-discussed vulnerability for companies that have spent decades outsourcing functions to the country. India’s outbreak is intensifying even as vaccinations fuel economic recoveries in other parts of the world, heightening fears of a back-office bottleneck at a time when Wall Street firms have rarely been busier.“This is not a local, India-only problem, this is a global crisis,” said D.D. Mishra, senior director analyst at researcher Gartner Inc. The current wave will be “significantly bigger” and organizations with India-based staff “will need to take action to plan for and mitigate if needed,” Mishra and his colleagues wrote in a note last week.Nasscom, the key lobby group for India’s $194 billion outsourcing industry and its almost 5 million employees, has downplayed the threat to operations. But Mishra and fellow analysts at Gartner say they’re fielding a daily flood of calls from anxious global clients asking about the Covid-19 situation.India’s total coronavirus infections have risen to 21.5 million, of which about a third were added since mid-April. The state of Karnataka, whose capital is Bangalore, reported almost 50,000 new infections for a second straight day, with 30% of all results throwing up a positive result.Experts have warned the crisis has the potential to worsen in the coming weeks, with one model predicting as many as 1,018,879 deaths by the end of July, quadrupling from the current official count of 234,083. A model prepared by government advisers suggests the wave could peak in the coming days, but the group’s projections have been changing and were wrong last month.In Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai, the three main bases for the financial giants’ operations, infection rates have reached such alarming levels that local governments have ordered stringent restrictions on movement.While the crisis has hit swathes of the nation’s $2.9 trillion economy, the latest wave has notably affected the twenty-something segment of the population that dominates outsourcing companies and is hard to replace. Most of them are English-speaking, technically-skilled workers.Continuity PlanningFor now, back-office units are marshaling part-time workers or asking employees to perform multiple roles and re-assigning staff to make up for those who are absent. They are scheduling overtime, deferring low-priority projects and conducting pandemic continuity planning exercises for multiple locations should the virus wave intensify.A Wells Fargo employee said some work is getting transferred to the Philippines, where staff is working overnight shifts to pick up the slack. The San Francisco-based bank employs about 35,000 workers in India to help process car, home and personal loans, make collections, and assist customers who need to open, update or close their bank accounts. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.An employee at UBS said that with many of the bank’s 8,000 staff in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad absent, work is being shipped to centers such as Poland. The Swiss bank’s workers in India handle trade settlement, transaction reporting, investment banking support and wealth management. Many of the tasks require same-day or next-day turnarounds. A UBS representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.With uncertainty surrounding how soon the Indian government will contain the crisis, one executive who asked not to be identified likened the situation to flying blind without any idea how many employees will be affected from one week to the next.Rebalancing Loads“We are looking carefully at how we can rebalance loads,” Standard Chartered Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters said on an earnings call last week, noting that some work has been routed to Kuala Lumpur, Tianjin and Warsaw. “In any case, we think we are very well provided for.”Barclays Plc CEO Jes Staley said some functions were shifted to the U.K. from India. Call volumes have increased and people are distressed, he said, adding that signs of pressure was something to watch for. The bank has 20,000 employees in India.Last year, when a sudden lockdown ordered by Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw these banks scrambling to keep their operations running, the European Banking Authority said the push to outsource support functions “exposed these banks to operational risks.”After asking their employees to work from home en masse last year, most of them have continued to operate at near 100% work-from-home levels. Natwest Group Plc’s workforce in Bangalore, Delhi and the southern city of Chennai -- accounting for a fifth of its global total -- is completely set up to work from home.Management BandwidthSimilarly, thousands of Goldman employees are working from home, doing high-end business tasks such as risk modeling, accounting compliance and app building. A representative for the bank said workflows can be absorbed by the wider team if needed and there’s been no material impact so far.Citigroup Inc. said there’s currently no significant disruption, while Deutsche Bank AG said employees were working seamlessly from home. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co. detailed relief efforts they are undertaking, but didn’t elaborate on the impact on their operations. Last week, HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn said he’s “watching it closely” and ruled out any material impact at this stage.Besides worrying about disruptions to operations, employee well-being and securing medical help are also taking up a lot of management bandwidth at every large outsourcing unit.At a recent all-hands, virtual corporate strategy team meeting at Accenture Plc, for instance, the talk wasn’t about the usual pay-raises or promotions. Instead, worker after worker demanded flexibility, reduced workloads and no-meeting Fridays, an executive said, asking not to be named discussing internal company matter.Their size has become a hindrance, one executive said, but it’s not clear where else they can go for talent and scale, he added.“We are telling clients they need to relax service levels and reduce expectations for the coming few weeks,” said Mishra, the Gartner analyst. “This not a normal situation.”(Updates infections and deaths in eighth and ninth paragraphs.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

DARK SIDE OF THE (SAFE)MOON?

Morgan Stanley (MS)

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Louis Navellier's Total Grade

Louis Navellier's Total Grade

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DARK SIDE OF THE (SAFE)MOON?

Morgan Stanley (MS)

Louis Navellier's Top 6 Stocks for 2021

Louis Navellier's Total Grade

Is ? a BUY?

Louis Navellier's Total Grade

Louis Navellier's Total Grade

Fundamental Grade

Quantitative Grade

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