Zaid Admani

On top of that, their wealth management business continues to be a machine.

The firm brought in over $120 billion in net new assets during Q4.

So yeah, the big picture here is that these big investment banks are crushing it right now.

They're taking advantage of the market volatility and increased M&A activity and also riding the AI boom by issuing debt.

All of that is great for business and their stock continues to move higher.

Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Shares of BlackRock are rising this morning after the world's largest asset manager reported a record $14 trillion in assets under management.

A big reason for that is ETFs.

See, BlackRock owns iShares, which has some of the biggest ETFs in the world.

So as more and more people invest in ETFs, that increases BlackRock's assets under management.

But beyond just ETFs, BlackRock has also been aggressively expanding into alternative investments, including private equity, private credit, and infrastructure.

That strategy is starting to pay off.

The firm now manages more than $423 billion in alternative assets, which is up over 45% from a year ago.

And these alternative assets have higher management fees compared to ETFs, which means more profit for BlackRock.

And here's another key detail for BlackRock.

Their base management fees, which are fees that aren't tied to market performance, those were up 9% year over year.

So that means that BlackRock continues to make money even when the markets get choppy.

As a result, shares of BlackRock were up more than 2% this morning in reaction to the earnings.

Now, on the flip side, oil stocks are sliding this morning after President Trump dialed back his aggressive stance on Iran, easing fears of a U.S.

attack on the country.