About Michael
Michael Wilson is currently the Chief Investment Officer and Chief U.S. Equity Strategist for Morgan Stanley. As CIO, Mike is responsible for all investment advice provided to the Firm’s institutional and retail clients. As the Chief US Equity Strategist, Mike is responsible for leading Morgan Stanley’s Equity Strategy advice to the firm’s global institutional clients. Since taking on this role in 2017, Mike has consistently been ranked among the top Equity Strategists on the street having achieved the #1 position between 2022-24.
Mike was Chair of the Global Investment Committee from 2013-2024. This committee provides asset allocation advice to Morgan Stanley’s 16,000 financial advisors and 4 million+ wealth management (retail) clients holding over $6 trillion. During Mike’s time as Chair, the allocation advice outperformed its benchmark by over 100bps per year. He also created and oversaw the outsourced CIO business which actively manages over $500B.
Between 2012 and 2019, Mike was the CIO and Head of Research for Wealth Management. In this role, Mike consolidated the research teams of Smith Barney and Dean Witter created during the merger in 2009. Under Mike’s leadership, investment research was democratized across the firm’s institutional and retail clients as a new level of sophistication was brought to financial advisors. This effort has greatly assisted in the firm’s advisory strategy for Wealth Management and allowed it to grow faster than its peers.
Prior to becoming CIO and Head of Research for Wealth Management in 2013 Mike worked in the Institutional Equities Division where he created and managed the street’s first sector specialist team in 1999 for TMT (Tech, Media Telecom). Mike expanded this effort to all sectors in 2003, a strategy that was quicky copied by other investment banks and remains a major offering for most today. Sector specialists were responsible for covering clients by sector and provided unique content for more active, trading oriented accounts. The team also provided fundamental analysis to the trading desk to help manage risk which evolved into a significant proprietary trading effort between 2005-2008.
