James P. Gorman is rubbing Goldman Sachs’s nose in it.
Morgan Stanley’s chief executive didn’t just hit his return goal with a $1.8 billion first-quarter earnings showing. His fixed-income, currency and commodities traders virtually doubled their top line from what was a tough period for the industry last year, confirming that their chief rival made a mess of the first three months of the year.
Morgan Stanley’s 96 percent increase in fixed-income trading was easily the best of the batch of Wall Street’s bulge-bracket results. Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase increased their comparable division’s revenue just shy of a fifth, which was enough to take them back to about what they were earning in the first quarter of 2015.
