15 Fresh Stocks Jim Cramer Discussed

4. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)

Number of Hedge Fund Holdings: 69

Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) is one of the largest investment banks in the world. The shares are up by 37% over the past year and by 3.9% year-to-date. Keefe Bruyette raised the share price target to $210 from $202 in January and kept an Outperform rating on the shares in January. The shift came after Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)’s fourth quarter earnings report, which saw the bank post $17.89 billion in revenue and $2.68 in earnings per share. The results beat analyst estimates of $17.77 billion and $2.44. Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS)’s shares jumped by 6% following the report, and CEO Ted Pick remarked that the strong results were due to the bank’s multi-year investments bearing fruit. Ahead of the earnings, Cramer had commented that we might see “fireworks” and added that the “asset gathering in Morgan Stanley has been extraordinary.” After the results, he reiterated that the CEO was doing a good job:

“You know Ted is, Ted Pick is doing a great job. Remember my thesis, they’ve been taken down? Well because people just say, you know what, this group is not, these aren’t semis, this is not AI, it’s not semiconductors, in the end, it’s finance and these stocks are up 35%.

“Look I’m going to go against the market, I think the market’s wrong on this, I think the market’s trying to figure out, has it moved too much? And I think Ted Pick has reinvented this company, I got to salute him. . .but this Morgan Stanley model’s a good one, David, it’s very sticky, it’s much less episodic, it deserves a much higher price-to-earnings multiple.”