Munger Mode rating: 3 out of 5 — Hold. Our own rating from the research report below, on business quality first: moat durability and management, with price separating the top three.
Written in the first person, as we would discuss it between ourselves in Omaha. Morgan Stanley today is two businesses wearing one nameplate. Roughly half of it — the Wealth Management and Investment Management franchises, sitting atop $10.1 trillion of client assets — is a genuinely wonderful business: sticky, capital-light, fee-generating, and compounding. The other half — Institutional Securities, a top-three global trading and investment banking house — is a fine franchise of a mediocre species: cyclical, capital-hungry, leveraged 15-to-1, and dependent on the kindness of markets. James Gorman spent fifteen years transforming this firm from a trading house that nearly died in 2008 into a wealth-gathering machine, and Ted Pick has so far proven a worthy steward. Management here is capable, honest, and allocates capital sensibly.
Recent filings analysed: 10-Q (2026-08-04), 8-K (2026-07-15), 8-K (2026-06-24), 8-K (2026-05-15).
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