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Research library · Asset Managers & Investment Banks

Asset Managers & Investment Banks: the moats, the numbers, the verdicts.

22 companies covered. Every report re-run after the latest earnings.

Ameriprise Financial, Inc. AMP

Ameriprise earned $11.98 a share last quarter against $5.83 five quarters earlier.

Back of Napkin

Apollo Global Management, Inc. APO

Apollo lost $1.91B in the March quarter and earned $1.36B in the June one, and neither number describes the business.

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Ares Management Corporation ARES

Ares raised a record $36.4B in a single quarter, sits on a record $170B of dry powder, and the share count that funds all this growth has risen 18% in two years.

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Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. BAM

Brookfield Asset Management raised a record $77B in one quarter, a single $40B insurance mandate inside it, and the stock costs 28 times this year's consensus, the richest multiple

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Blackstone Inc. BX

Blackstone runs $1.35 trillion and just grew distributable profit 26% in a quarter, yet its base management fees, the annuity everything else stands on, grew 4.5%.

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Evercore Inc. EVR

Evercore's first half ran 56% ahead of last year, a pace no advisory firm sustains, and the stock has already given back a quarter from its high while the records were still printi

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Galaxy Digital GLXY

Ignore both numbers. The company that matters now is a West Texas data center landlord that borrowed $3.5B at 9.875% in July, and the crypto desk is what it used to be.

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The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. GS

Goldman Sachs earned a 23.5% return on equity last quarter, against 12.8% a year earlier, and its banking and markets division nearly doubled its pretax income.

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Robinhood Markets, Inc. HOOD

Robinhood's prediction market went from $10M of quarterly revenue to $156M in a year, while its crypto business fell from $160M to $100M.

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Invesco Ltd. IVZ

Invesco sits at $29.24 near a 52-week high after doubling off the $14.46 low, with a 2.9% dividend and a clean balance sheet, but the reported GAAP loss masks a business throwing o

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Jefferies Financial Group Inc. JEF

Japan's SMBC bought over 12 million Jefferies shares in the open market this spring and summer, roughly $650M at $48 to $55, while the stock sat 25% below its high.

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KKR & Co. Inc. KKR

In February, KKR's two co-chief executives each spent roughly $17M of their own cash buying stock in the open market near $100, and six months later the firm printed record fee ear

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Lazard Inc LAZ

Lazard's asset-management arm just had its best half of inflows in roughly twenty years while its advisory arm shrank 9%, and the chief executive sold 125,000 shares two days ago.

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Moelis & Company MC

Three years ago Moelis lost money for a full year; last quarter it set a Q2 revenue record, and that round trip is the entire risk profile of the stock in one sentence.

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MarketAxess Holdings Inc. MKTX

MarketAxess lost share in United States high-grade corporate bonds in every one of the last four years, from 21.3% to 18.4%, and in high-yield from 17.1% to 12.5%.

Moat Dive · Back of Napkin

Morgan Stanley MS

Morgan Stanley's balance sheet grew $310B in three quarters, from $1.36T to $1.68T, against $6B of additional common equity.

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Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. OPY

Oppenheimer earns $13 a share, carries $94 of book value, and the family that controls it through 99,665 unlisted voting shares just watched the stock nearly double in a year to $1

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Blue Owl Capital Inc. OWL

Blue Owl's fee growth has been cut in half in eighteen months, from 24% to 8%, and the market has answered by cutting the stock 39% and leaving a 7.8% dividend yield on the table.

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Raymond James Financial, Inc. RJF

Raymond James is the one bank in this week's advisory sweep that is not really a bank on a deal cycle: 72% of its revenue is fees on $1.92 trillion of client assets that mostly sit

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SEI Investments Company SEIC

You're paying about 15 times forward earnings for a diversified financial-technology firm that runs the back office for other people's funds and also manages money, a high-return c

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StoneX Group Inc. SNEX

StoneX just grew quarterly earnings 102% after swallowing R.J. O'Brien, the largest non-bank futures broker, and five of its senior officers spent July and August exercising decade

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Tradeweb Markets Inc. TW

In June 2026 Tradeweb passed MarketAxess in electronic corporate bond share for the first time since 2012.

Moat Dive · Back of Napkin