Morgan Stanley First Quarter Earnings (MS)

Morgan Stanley’s first quarter report card was released to the public recently, we analyze the Morgan Stanly stock for would be investors. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) company shares stood at 31.9 as of 4/22/2010 signifying a +0.22 – +0.69% change over the previous day.

Morgan Stanley, a company in the Investment Brokerage – National (Financial Services) industry, has had a number of headlines recently, which has led to a -4.0% movement in its stock price over the past 3 months.

Morgan Stanley, one of the Wall Street banking giants, has announced a strong performance in the first quarter of 2010. The positive performance came largely from its trading division,which totaled $1.4 billion. The earnings compared to the loss of $578 million in the same period last year, when all of the big banks were struggling with the financial crisis. The company paid 2.2 billion dollars in bonuses.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) Basic Analysis

For today’s basic analysis, we start with the P/E. MS’s current P/E is at NA – worse than the average across the industry of 11.5. Analysts believe that MS’s forward P/E is around 9.52, so that’s a plus compared to the trailing P/E. An even better tool is the PEG ratio – where Morgan Stanley’s 1 ratio makes it technically overvalued and worse off than the industry’s average 5 year PEG ratio of 1

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) Analyst Advice

The general analyst opinion regarding MS is a Hold, with a current 2.05 mean recommendation (with 1 being a strong buy, and 5 being a strong sell). The same average score 3 months ago was 1.89. Zacks, the investment research firm, gives Morgan Stanley a 29 out of 31 rank in the industry.

Also worth sharing is the shares’ grades from MSN in the following areas:

Technical Grade: D
Valuation Grade:B
Fundemental Grade:F
Return Grade:D
Risk Grade: C

Finally, no matter whether you decide to buy, hold or sell Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) shares, be sure you make the trade at the right price. Finding a gap in the market or technical analysis can be a hard task, but do take into account the historical price data:

Price History
Last Price: 31.9
52 Week Low / High: 20.69 / 35.78
50 Day Moving Average: 28.93
6 Month Price Change %: -11.6%
12 Month Price Change %: 21.7%

We will continue checking the MS (NYSE:MS) share price for changes over the next few weeks.