Morgan Stanley’s profit topped forecasts last quarter as stock-trading revenue jumped and wealth-management profit margins hit a record. Record brokerage revenue and investment banking pushed revenue up 26 percent to $8.33 billion. Shares of the New York-based lender have risen 45 percent in 2013, more than twice the S&P 500.
Net income at Bank of America, the second-biggest U.S. lender, climbed 63 percent to $4.01 billion last quarter. Profit from consumer and business banking rose 15 percent on lower bad credit expenses. Per-share earnings should more than double this year, according to the average of analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
“Financials were hit hardest in the crisis and they have been licking their wounds ever since,” Todd Lowenstein, a Los Angeles-based fund manager at HighMark Capital Management Inc., which oversees $19 billion, said in a telephone interview. “We are still in the early innings of recovery.”