Raymond James Financial, Inc. RJF

The business

Raymond James is a wealth-management firm wearing an investment bank's coat. Nearly 9,000 advisors manage client money, a record $1.15 trillion of it in fee-based accounts billed as a percentage of assets, and that private client group produced $2.84B of last quarter's $3.93B in net revenue. Around it sit a capital markets arm that swings with the deal cycle, an asset manager, and a bank that lends against the client base's own deposits. The moat is the advisor relationship: assets follow the advisor, advisors stay for the platform and their book, and net new assets ran $21.7B last quarter, a 5.5% organic growth rate most competitors envy.