Morgan Stanley doesn’t expect Q2 trading boom to continue

Morgan Stanley MS.N Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Pruzan said on Wednesday the bank doesn’t expect its sales and trading and investment banking business to perform as well in the third quarter as it had in the second.

Pruzan, at a virtual conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, said that August activity levels had still been good and the bank had seen “no real slowdown”.

“From an Institutional Securities Group (ISG) perspective, we’re not going to have as good a quarter as we did in the second quarter, but I would say it’s sort of better than a typical summer quarter,” Pruzan said.

During the second quarter, Wall Street’s big investment banks gained from huge swings in financial markets due to the coronavirus crisis.

Pruzan said activity levels in August were good, with “no real slowdown” and the bank was seeing “very constructive markets” across all parts of its sales and trading and investment banking business.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Matt Scuffham and Abhishek Manikandan in Bengaluru; editing by Jonathan Oatis)