I'm Carl Cantona with Leslie Picker, David Faber here at Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange.

As for markets, about 1% gains for S&P NAS, not quite taking back Friday's intraday high,

but the VIX is back sub-20, 10-year circling right around 401.

Today, an exclusive interview with B of A's chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan,

talking as banks' Q3B and strength of the consumer, some card spend,

plus stacking the chips, ASML moving higher following its latest earnings print with other semiconductors joining in on that rally.

And let's get right to the banks with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley headlining today's results, some stellar performance now that the market

has opened as well. Morgan Stanley up nearly 7%. That call is still ongoing. Ted Pick was just talking

about the golden age of investment banking, which I think you can see really reflected in these

results. They beat on all metrics, essentially, except for expenses. But, you know,

in terms of their three major businesses, big beats relative to expectations, investment banking

up 44% during the quarter led largely by advisory, which is basically the fees generated

from advising on mergers and acquisitions

transactions, as well as equity underwriting, which was a huge beat for them as well.

And equity's trading beat, and that that was up 35%.

Before the call, I was able to actually talk with Morgan Stanley CFO, Sharon Yeshaya,

about the current M&A environment.

And she had some interesting comments just about, you know, she says basically from the lens, we are just at the beginning.

Oh, okay, here's, so she is talking about M&A for the firm itself. So they have a lot of excess capital.

And she says, quote, we have the optionality and we're in a position where those inorganic

opportunities to the extent that we execute are going to be places that are key and core

to the current strategy.

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