Morgan Stanley reported profit that beat analysts’ estimates as a jump in trading and brokerage fees led to the biggest revenue increase among the six largest U.S. banks.

Second-quarter net income fell 4.8 percent to $1.81 billion, or 85 cents a share, from $1.9 billion, or 92 cents, a year earlier, the New York-based company said Monday in a statement. Excluding an accounting gain, profit was 79 cents a share, topping the 74-cent average estimate of 23 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Morgan Stanley reported the only increase in bond trading among the biggest U.S. banks and posted record profit in its wealth-management unit for the fourth time in five quarters. Chief Executive Officer James Gorman has used growth at the brokerage to avoid revenue drops that plagued other Wall Street firms.

“Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management business is kind of its own unique animal,” Devin Ryan, an analyst with JMP Group Inc., said in an interview with Bloomberg Television before the results were announced. “They’ll have a pretty solid quarter, and wealth management should also have a good result.”

Morgan Stanley shares have climbed 3.6 percent this year. The stock more than doubled in the last two and a half years, including a 24 percent jump in 2014 that led the biggest U.S. investment banks for a second straight year.

Trading Operations

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. last week reported trading revenue that dropped more than 9 percent, with the latter’s decline driven by unit sales. Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. also posted trading revenue declines.

Morgan Stanley’s trading operations may benefit from a higher credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service. Morgan Stanley’s long-term issuer rating was the only one of the major banks that Moody’s raised two levels in May, as the ratings company cited the firm’s strengthened capital and lower earnings volatility.

The upgrade was a reversal of three years ago, when Moody’s cut the rating two steps after threatening to downgrade it by three grades. It also represents a victory for Gorman, who met with analysts to make the bank’s case and called the review one of his top priorities this year.

The bank’s rating benefited from a shrinking reliance on trading. Morgan Stanley agreed in May to sell its oil- merchanting business to Castleton Commodities International LLC, which will pay more than $1 billion. The sale is the culmination of a multiyear effort to reshape its commodities unit amid new capital rules and regulatory scrutiny.

Morgan Stanley posted the biggest increase in investment- banking revenue among major U.S. firms in 2014. It was the third-ranked adviser on global announced mergers and acquisitions in the first half of this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Last quarter was the first under Morgan Stanley’s new capital-return plan, which features regulatory approval to repurchase an average of more than $600 million of stock per quarter over five quarters, up from $250 million a quarter over the 12 months ended in March.

This earnings announcement is the first for Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Pruzan, 47, who replaced Ruth Porat after she left in May for Google Inc. Pruzan was previously co-head of the financial institutions banking group, the same role Porat, 57, held before she took the CFO job.