Raphael Stevens

People walk out of the Morgan Stanley global headquarters in Manhattan on March 20, 2025 in New York City. 
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Morgan Stanley on Wednesday reported second-quarter results that crushed Wall Street expectations on the back of higher trading revenues.
Here’s what the bank reported for the second quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: $2.13 vs. $1.96 expected
Revenue: $16.79 billion versus $16.07 billion expected

Net income rose 13% to $3.5 billion, or $2.13 per share, from $3.1 billion, or $1.82 per share, for the same period a year ago.
Institutional securities reported net revenues of $7.64 billion, compared to about $6.98 billion a year ago. The strong performance was propelled by higher client activity with notable strength in equity trading.
“Morgan Stanley delivered another strong quarter,” Ted Pick, CEO and chairman of the bank said in a statement. “Six sequential quarters of consistent earnings … reflect higher levels of performance in different market environments.”
Wealth management was another strong segment for the bank, which delivered net revenues of $7.76 billion on higher asset management revenues. A year ago, the business saw revenues of $6.79 billion.
The bank stock has risen more than 12% this year, doubling the S&P 500’s performance. Shares were around flat in premarket trading immediately following the results. More

It may be a strategic time to pivot away from this year’s Big Tech winners.
Bob Elliott, who runs Unlimited Funds, suggests building portfolios designed to withstand a slowing economy over the next six months should be a priority.

“You’re talking about positions long bonds, long gold and short the U.S. dollar,” the firm’s CEO and chief investment officer told “ETF Edge” this week. “That’s a very non-consensus view that is also favored by some of the smartest financial minds in the world [and] in the hedge fund community.”
Elliott’s firm Unlimited Funds uses proprietary technology to create accessible alternative investment strategies, including four Unlimited ETFs.
According to Elliott, stock and bond market investors are pricing in a near-perfect scenario over the short and medium term. He thinks President Donald Trump’s tariffs and an inflation acceleration could expose market vulnerabilities.
“Being able to flexibly respond to the policy environment as it evolves… is really important in terms of building a portfolio and getting away from the long-only mega cap tech stock mindset and get to something that’s flexible that can navigate through this sort of environment,” said Elliott.
Meanwhile, Strategas Securities’ Todd Sohn thinks underperformers have potential for upside as earnings season gets underway.

“The bar is so low for some of these defensive companies,” the firm’s technical strategist said in the same interview – noting it’s “basement bottom pickings.”
Sohn’s contrarian ideas include health care.
“There’s been a mass exodus of outflows from health care sector ETFs,” he said. “Folks are scared of the administration. I get that, but I wonder if you can start to nibble in certain areas.”

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Healthcare ETF

Bitcoin ‘here to stay’

Sohn also finds bitcoin an attractive play right now. The House of Representatives is looking at a series of bills tied to cryptocurrencies this week.
“We’re about three months off the S&P 500 low back on April 8. The leading category, I like to dig a little level deeper here, has been crypto. Investors are just latching on to this move in crypto,” he said. “I think investors are realizing it’s an asset that’s here to stay.”
After hitting an all-time high on Monday, bitcoin fell and was below $117,000 as of Tuesday evening.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised China’s AI models a day after the U.S. chipmaker said it expected to resume sales of a key product to China.
“More than 1.5 million developers in China build on Nvidia today to bring their innovations to life,” he said.
He was speaking Wednesday at the opening ceremony of a supply chain expo in Beijing and is scheduled to hold a press conference later in the day.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.
Sarah Meyssonnier | Reuters

BEIJING — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang praised China’s generative artificial intelligence models, a day after the U.S. chipmaker said it expected to resume sales of a key AI chip to the country soon.
“Models like DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent, MiniMax, and Baidu Ernie bot are world class, developed here and shared openly [and] have spurred AI developments worldwide,” Huang said. He was speaking Wednesday at the opening ceremony of a supply chain expo in Beijing. He is scheduled to hold a press conference later in the day.

“More than 1.5 million developers in China build on Nvidia today to bring their innovations to life,” he said.
China-developed DeepSeek shocked global investors in January with an AI model that undercut OpenAI on development and operating costs. It’s not clear how DeepSeek managed to develop the model under broad U.S. chip restrictions on China, but the startup’s parent, High-Flyer, reportedly stockpiled Nvidia chips.
Nvidia on Tuesday said it expected to resume its H20 chip shipments to China soon following assurances from the U.S. government. The company was forced to halt the sales in April due to new U.S. requirements at the time.

U.S. chip restrictions nearly halved Nvidia’s share in China, Huang said in May. Due to the U.S. export controls on China, the company said it missed out on $2.5 billion in sales during the April quarter, and will likely take another $8 billion hit in the July quarter, pegging its quarterly sales at $45 billion.
Huang has warned that Chinese telecoms giant Huawei stands to benefit from U.S. AI chip curbs on exports to the Asian country.

Jensen is on his third trip to China this year, according to reports going back to January.
In the global race for AI, Chinese companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu have all rushed to release their own AI models despite limited access to training chips. OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot is also not officially available in China.

Praise for open-source approach

Huang on Wednesday also praised Chinese companies for taking an open-source approach to AI, meaning developers can access the underlying code for free. Notably OpenAI in the U.S. has not yet taken this approach. Alibaba-backed startup Moonshot last week released a new open source model called Kimi K2 that claims to beat OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude on certain coding metrics.
“China’s open-source AI is a catalyst for global progress, giving every country and industry a chance to join the AI revolution,” Huang said. He added that open-source technology is also “key” for AI safety and enables international cooperation on standards.
Huang also described how AI “powers” Chinese consumer tech such as Tencent’s WeChat social media app, Alibaba’s Taobao shopping app, ByteDance’s Douyin short-video app and Meituan’s “super convenient” delivery.
The latest U.S. government restrictions on Nvidia had followed tighter export controls over the last three years that prevent American companies from selling advanced semiconductors to China over concerns that the tech will support the development of Beijing’s defense sectors.
Huang has pushed back against concerns that China’s military would use U.S. technology, and emphasized global access was needed for the country to remain a world leader in AI, according to an interview with CNN that aired Sunday.
Following U.S.-China trade talks in London last month, the U.S. has started to ease some restrictions on high tech exports to China, while Beijing has resumed some issuance of licenses that allow its companies to export critically needed rare earths to the U.S.
– CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report. More

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says he doesn’t get the appeal of stablecoins, but he also can’t afford to stay on the sidelines.
Last month, JPMorgan announced it will launch a more limited version of a stablecoin that only works for JPMorgan clients; a true stablecoin would presumably be more universally accepted.
“We’re going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins to understand it, to be good at it,” Dimon said.
Citigroup and Bank of America executives have also said they would get involved.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, leaves the U.S. Capitol after a meeting with Republican members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on the issue of de-banking on Feb. 13, 2025.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says he doesn’t get the appeal of stablecoins, but he also can’t afford to stay on the sidelines.
It’s the message Dimon gave Tuesday when asked during an earnings conference call about whether his company, the largest and most influential U.S. bank, was exploring the payment technology.

Stablecoins, as the name suggests, are a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a steady value that are usually pegged to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar. Last month, JPMorgan announced it will launch a more limited version of a stablecoin that only works for JPMorgan clients; a true stablecoin would presumably be more universally accepted.
“We’re going to be involved in both JPMorgan deposit coin and stablecoins to understand it, to be good at it,” Dimon said. “I think they’re real, but I don’t know why you’d want to [use a] stablecoin as opposed to just payment.”
Dimon, 69, is one of the most vocal opponents of certain cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. But his bank is a juggernaut in the global payments industry, helping move nearly $10 trillion daily, and so it makes sense that it would explore stablecoins at a time when the regulatory framework for the technology has opened up.
Failing to do so could cede ground to fintech players who are looking to recreate elements of the regulated financial ecosystem, Dimon said Tuesday.
“You know, these guys are very smart,” Dimon said of his fintech competitors. “They’re trying to figure out a way to create bank accounts, to get into payment systems and rewards programs, and we have to be cognizant of that. And the way to be cognizant is to be involved.”

Citigroup, BofA coins?

Stablecoins could offer a potentially faster and cheaper form of payment over traditional banking rails including ACH and SWIFT, which are decades-old systems that typically take days to settle.
Citigroup executives said Tuesday that the bank was “looking at the issuance of a Citi stablecoin” among several ways to play in the space. The biggest opportunity is around tokenized deposits and in providing custody for crypto assets, they said.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan has also said his firm would get involved in stablecoins.
One way could be for traditional banks to collaborate through the jointly owned Early Warning Services. That would be similar to the way they banded together to offer Zelle for instant peer-to-peer payments as a way to defend turf against PayPal and Block’s Cash App.
When asked Tuesday about a possible collaboration among banks, Dimon declined to give a specific answer.
“That’s a great question, and we’ll leave it remaining as a question,” Dimon said. “You can assume we’re thinking about all that.”
— With reporting from CNBC’s Jesse Pound.

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