New Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Price Targets With IPO Surge Ahead

We are circling back, as promised, to our Morgan Stanley (MS) price target following the IPOs of the Andersen Group (ANDG) and medical supplier Medline (MDLN).

Both deals priced at the upper end of their respective pricing ranges and have gone on to trade higher, with MDLN shares up some 29% as we write this alert. Those movements led to favorable comments from Kristin Roth DeClark, Barclays global head of technology investment banking, on Wednesday, about the IPO market in 2026.

Adding to our thinking that lower interest rates should help spur overall investment banking activity higher in the coming quarters, DeClark pointed out the government shutdown delayed “many” IPOs. This is not new information, given the SEC was not reviewing filings, but still a solid reminder. In DeClark’s view, that means we’re likely to see a more active than usual January and February. And as we move through 1H 2026, we’ll have a better sense of timing for some of the large IPOs from Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, Stripe and others.

For now, we’ll list our MS price target to $185 from $170, and subject to Q1 2026 IPO and M&A activity, we’ll revisit our new target. For (BAC) shares, we’ll increase our target to $65 from $60, and the same conditions apply for Q1 2026.

We will also remind you that we are keeping close watch on position sizes for BAC shares and those for American Express (AXP) . Currently, those position sizes are roughly 4.43% and 4.44% of the Portfolio’s assets, and should they cross the 4.5% level, odds are we’ll do some prudent and profitable register ringing.

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