Morgan Stanley's first-quarter earnings show that not much has been done to heal the weakness in its fixed-income department. Revenue from trading bonds, commodities, and currencies fell 42 percent to $1.5 billion for the first quarter of 2013 from $2.6 billion in the year-earlier period.
Those results a markedly worse than the firm's competitors. Goldman Sachs saw its fixed-income trading revenue decline by just 7 percent.
Equities sales and trading for institutional clients did not provide any relief here either, with revenue falling 20 percent.
It appears that Morgan Stanley's customers are either pulling back, moving business to rival Wall Street firms, or that Morgan Stanley is just making serious trading errors. Morgan pointed to interest rates and commodities as a particular source of weakness.