Morgan Stanley Posts Loss as Revenue Fell 62%

While narrower spreads are ordinarily a good sign — they suggest that investors are more confident in Morgan Stanley’s creditworthiness — they reduced the company’s earnings for accounting reasons（？不懂。投资者对Morgan Stanley的信誉增加，credit spread---treasuary minus non-treasuary下降，说明国债利率上升，实业企业借贷的利率下降；而Morgan Stanley是搞资金流通的，贷款利率下降，当然收入减少）.

“While challenging markets continued to impact our results this quarter, we saw improved performance across most of our businesses during the past three months,” Mr. Mack said.

In the last few weeks, big financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase,Citigroup and Bank of America（说明，这些企业和Morgan Stanley在业务上还是有很大差别的） have reported quarterly results that topped analysts’ expectations. Many of these banks relied on accounting gains or onetime factors, however, raising questions about the strength of their core businesses.

Like Goldman, Morgan Stanley shifted its fiscal reporting structure to a calendar year from a fiscal year. For this reason, Morgan Stanley’s results for the month of December — a $1.3 billion loss — were reported separately.（好奇怪的会计准则）

Also, Morgan Stanley said it was reducing its dividend for common shareholders to 5 cents per share.（？，亏损还能发放普通股的股息？）