As Morgan Stanley Rises to Our Price Target, We're Watching the IPO Market

Over the last few days, our shares of Morgan Stanley (MS) have quietly risen to nearly touch our $170 price target. You’ll remember that we’ve lifted that target a few times over the last year as the IPO market picked up steam, and M&A activity did the same.

The outlook for both remains favorable, with M&A activity slated to continue not only as companies look to fill product, technology and geographic gaps, but as lower interest rates reduce deal hurdle costs.

Following the recent bout of volatility in the stock market, as we move past the usually quiet Thanksgiving week, we’re also starting to see a pick back up in the IPO market. Fintech company Wealthfront (WLTH) launched its IPO roadshow as it looks to price an offering of up to 34.6 million shares between $12 and $14. Lumexa Imaging announced the launch of its IPO for 25 million shares with a target range of $17 to $20. Rounding out the list, Cardinal Infrastructure Group (CDNL) targets a range of $20 to $22 for the 11.5 million shares it aims to bring to market.

Once again, we’ll be watching not only how these transactions price, but also how their respective shares perform in subsequent days. That litmus test will tell us if investors are again interested in putting capital to work in newly public companies. Based on those findings, we’ll revisit the prospective IPO market for 1H 2026 and what that means for our shares of Morgan Stanley as well as Bank of America (BAC) .

We will also share that as we share this with you: MS shares account for 4.31% of the Portfolio’s assets, and BAC shares roughly 4.25%. As we noted in our November Monthly Roundup, should one or the other, or even both, continue to melt up and move past a 4.5% position size, some prudent Portfolio management may be called for.

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long MS and BAC.