Posts belonging to Category Morgan Stanley



Morgan Stanley Advises Investors to Sell Junk Bonds

 

Record low yields on junk bonds have led Morgan Stanley to downgrade them and advise investors to reduce their holdings. Even in good economic times, junk bond are riskier than investment grade bonds and are supposed to pay significantly more interest as a risk premium. However, today’s weak economy increases the risk of default by […]

Was Facebook’s Disastrous IPO Rigged by Wall Street?

 

The house always wins. That saying was originally meant to warn people away from the Vegas Strip on Las Vegas Boulevard. But sometimes it applies even more strongly to Wall Street. Recently, investors who wanted to get in on the next Google lost a ton of money on the Facebook IPO, while Wall Street did […]

The Facebook Fiasco Confirms that Wall Street Views Smaller Investors as Second Class Citizens

 

Facebook made national headlines last Friday when the social networking giant sold shares to the general public in its IPO. The company is now making even more headlines as investors have filed lawsuits against it and all of its underwriters alleging that they released material information to only “preferred investors” (See “Facebook, banks sued over […]

Facebook Underwriters Make Millions – Investors Lose Their Shirts

 

In addition to substantial IPO fees, the Facebook underwriters headed by Morgan Stanley made “a profit of about $100 million” through an options bet which benefits the banks when the IPO price is too high and the stock value plummets. (See “Morgan Stanley, Others Make Profit of $100 Million Stabilizing Facebook,” Gina Chon, Aaron Luchetti […]

Regulators Sanction Major Wall Street Firms for Improper Sales of High-Risk ETFs

 

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) announced that it ordered Citigroup Global Markets, Morgan Stanley, UBS Financial Services, and Wells Fargo Advisors to pay more than $9.1 million for failure to supervise and failure to have a reasonable basis for recommending selling leveraged and inverse exchange traded funds. Each of the four firms sold billions […]

Wall Street Firms Continue to Cover Up for Each Other

 

Morgan Stanley’s CEO James Gorman warned Morgan Stanley employees not to circulate a New York Times op-ed piece by former Goldman employee Greg Smith that blasted Goldman’s culture as “morally bankrupt” and said that success at Goldman was often achieved by selling products that the firm wanted to get rid of. Smith wrote the article […]

Is the SEC Too Soft on Major Wall Street Firms?

 

Questions continue to arise regarding the too-cozy relationship between the SEC and Wall Street. Recent reports claim that the SEC, when settling with big Wall Street firms, has a practice of granting waivers that preserve special privileges enjoyed by those firms, and protect them from serious consequences that would otherwise result from their wrongdoing. For […]

Are Wall Street Wirehouses ‘Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg?’

 

The big four Wall Street wirehouses have lost market share since the financial crisis in part because of their role in the crisis and “customer distrust,” according to Bing Waldert, a director of Cerulli Associates Inc. (See “Wirehouse market share has shriveled since crisis,” InvestmentNews). Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, UBS AG […]

Morgan Stanley Fined for Gouging Investors

 

The SEC is scrutinizing mutual funds’ fee arrangements, looking for instances of gouging, and finding plenty of them. Morgan Stanley just agreed to pay $3.3 million for its role facilitating over $1.8 million in payments by a mutual fund to a third party for services the fund did not receive (“Morgan Stanley Settles SEC Case,” […]

Concerns Rise Regarding Wall Street Banks

 

Fitch Ratings issued a report on November 16 on the U.S. banking sector saying that “the risks of a negative shock are rising” if the effects of European debt crisis keep spreading. (“Fitch’s Warning Spooks Investors, ” Wall Street Journal).