morgan stanley ceo james gorman said hes more confident on the markets than the rest of wall street seeing a return of dealmaking as soon as the federal reserve stops hiking interest rates im highly confident that when the fed pauses deal activity and underwriting activity will go up i would bet the year on that in fact gorman said on an earnings call tuesday were not of the view that were heading into a dark period whatever negativity in the world is out there thats not our house view his comments came as his new yorkbased firm reported fourthquarter earnings that topped wall street expectations boosted by the banks record wealth management revenue and growth at its trading business shares traded up 7 on tuesday following the results despite the overall strongerthanexpected results morgan stanleys investment banking suffered a big slowdown amid a collapse in ipos and debt and equity issuance revenue from investment banking came to 125 billion in the fourth quarter down 49 from a year ago the bank said the drop was due to the substantial decline in global equity underwriting volumes and lower completed ma transactions gorman said deal activity will get a boost once financial conditions start to loosen he said the feds next move will likely be a smaller 025 percentage point rate hike followed by a pause he added that hes not sure if the central bank will cut rates this year im a little more confident about the mediumterm outlook for the markets gorman said we want to make sure were positioned for growth this thing will turn ma underwriting will come back im positive of it so we want to be well positioned for it the fed has raised its benchmark interest rate to a targeted range between 425 and 45 the highest level in 15 years marking the most aggressive policy moves since the early 1980s theres a lot of money sitting around waiting to be put to work our job is to be the flow of capital between those who havent and those who need it so im pretty confident actually about the outlook gorman said