Out Fox The $treet

This view my Richard Berner of Morgan Stanley goes a long way to back up the statements of CSCO CEO John Chambers on their earnings call last night. Though everybody chose to hark on the comments about slowdowns in June and concerned customers, he actually stated that July picked up big time. In fact, CSCO plans to hire another 3K people this year bringing the yearly increase to nearly 10%. Now is that suggestive of a company concerned about a meaningful slowdown or somebody just providing a conservative outlook? You be the judge, but the latter is much more likely. And really were you surprised that CSCO talked about a temporary slowdown in June? Seriously people!

The market might have sold off today 'due' to the results at JPMorgan (JPM) and the fears of higher credit costs, but if anything it was a buy the rumor and sell the news. Or maybe just the media reporting the results in such a negative way that it scared the market. We'd bet that come Tuesday, all the buyers will be back as they realize that JPM could easily earn $3.5 next year making the stock clearly cheap. JPM reported net income of $3.3B or $.74 per share easily beating the $.61 estimates. Revenue was lower then expected, but that's nothing to get excited about in this recovery. Earnings rule revenue any time of the day. They beat estimates by 20% after all but that got quickly brushed aside. reported fourth-quarter 2009 net income of $3.3 billion, compared with net income of $702 million in the fourth quarter of 2008. Earnings per share were $0.74, compared with $0.06 in the fourth quarter of 2008. For the full year of 2009, net income was $11.7 billion, or $2.26...

The prior weekend, it was announced that Morgan Stanley (MS) had agreed to provide CF Industries (CF) with $2.5B in financing for the potential takeover of Terra Industries (TRA). Considering that we've been bullish on this deal and negative on MS for not being more aggressive in lending, this appears to be a game changer in both ways. Also, Bloomberg reported that this $2.5B deal is the largest leveraged lender commitment this year. It should provide plenty of fees for MS and signals a turn in MS that we find appealing. Especially considering they have chosen a very juicy sector to start loading up on. Even though the deal possibly won't go through as the drama in the numerous deals in the fertilizer sector continue to unfold. Morgan Stanley’s outstanding loans and lending commitments to non-investment grade companies peaked at $43 billion as of Aug. 31, 2007, before shrinking to $18.5 billion as of Sept. 30 of this year, according to the firm’s quarterly financial statement...