For most investors, how much a stock's price changes over time is important. This factor can impact your investment portfolio as well as help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.

Another factor that can influence investors is FOMO, or the fear of missing out, especially with tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.

What if you'd invested in Morgan Stanley (MS) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to MS for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?

Morgan Stanley's Business In-Depth

With that in mind, let's take a look at Morgan Stanley's main business drivers.

Founded in 1935 and incorporated under the laws of the State of Delaware in 1981, Morgan Stanley is the leading financial services holding company headquartered in New York. With 80,478 employees, the company serves a diversified group of clients and customers — including corporations, governments, financial institutions and individuals — through offices across 41 countries.

The company’s business is divided into three segments:

The Institutional Securities ("IS") segment (contributing 45.5% of total net revenues in 2024) includes capital raising; financial advisory services that include advices on mergers and acquisitions (M&As), restructurings, real estate and project finance; corporate lending; sales, trading, financing and market-making activities in equity and fixed income securities and related products, including foreign exchange and commodities; benchmark indices and risk management analytics; and investment activities.

The Wealth Management ("WM") segment (46%) provides brokerage and investment advisory services covering various investment alternatives; financial and wealth planning services; annuity and other insurance products; credit and other lending products; cash management services; retirement services; and trust and fiduciary services and engages in fixed income principal trading.

The Investment Management ("IM") segment (8.5%) provides global asset management products and services in equity, fixed income, alternative investments that include hedge funds and funds of funds, and merchant banking including real estate, private equity and infrastructure, to institutional and retail clients through proprietary and third-party distribution channels. The segment also engages in investment.

In 2019, Morgan Stanley acquired Canada-based Solium Capital Inc. and renamed it as Shareworks by Morgan Stanley. In 2020, the company acquired E*Trade Financial. In 2021, it acquired Eaton Vance.

Bottom Line

While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Morgan Stanley ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.

A $1000 investment made in February 2015 would be worth $3,941.88, or a 294.19% gain, as of February 7, 2025, according to our calculations. Investors should note that this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.

Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 195.97% and gold's return of 122.04% over the same time frame.

Analysts are forecasting more upside for MS too.

Morgan Stanley’s shares have outperformed the industry in the past year. Its fourth-quarter 2024 results show solid capital markets performance. The rebound of the investment banking (IB) business and a solid pipeline, efforts to become less dependent on capital market-driven revenues, inorganic expansion/strategic alliance and relatively high rates are expected to aid its financials. We project IB fees and total revenues to grow 12.4% and 4.8%, respectively, in 2025. Yet, costs are likely to stay elevated on business expansion efforts. We project total non-interest expenses to rise 5.8% in 2025. The ambiguity on the performance of capital markets is a woe. Though trading revenues are likely to rise going forward, they are less likely to reach the 2021 level soon. However, a solid balance sheet shows the sustainability of capital distributions.

The stock is up 10.34% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 8 higher, for fiscal 2025. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.

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