Why Two BlackRock Competitors Told Clients to Buy It

Traders have started betting on a rebound in the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock since its July earnings beat. They are doing it while the BlackRock stock price falls, and weeks after two of the firm’s biggest rivals told clients to buy.

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley both lifted their targets on July 16, and the market ignored them for eleven days.

The Bets Nobody Has Closed Now Favour a Rise

The put-call ratio weighs bets on a falling share price against bets on a rising one. A reading under 1.00 means the upside bets are winning.

On BlackRock stock, that measure sat at 1.00 on the day of the July 15 results, an even split. By July 24 it had slipped to 0.98, tipping the balance toward a rise.

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This particular reading only counts positions traders still hold after the market closes. That makes it the money people are willing to leave on the table overnight.

Short-term traders are less convinced. Counting only the trades placed each day, the same ratio climbed from roughly 0.70 to 0.83, so more downside bets are changing hands than before the results.

The split makes sense. Traders are keeping their bets on a recovery while paying for protection to survive the wait, because the share price has kept sliding.

The BLK Stock Price Has Not Agreed Yet, Despite Big Money Interest

Money flow tells the cautious half of the story. Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) shows whether institutional buyers or sellers control a stock, and anything under zero means the sellers do.

BlackRock stock sat near -0.28 on July 15 and recovered to -0.13 by July 24. That is still below zero, so sellers remain in charge. However, the institutional folks seem to be slowly responding to the JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley calls.

Their grip has weakened as the BlackRock price fell between July 15 and July 24 and the CMF trended higher. This could mean that the big traders are early and the share price has not caught up. That is the gap two rival banks spotted proactively.

The Call Two Competitors Made First

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley chase the same client money as BlackRock through J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Both still told clients to buy the competitor.

Morgan Stanley arrived there awkwardly. It cut its target to $1,383 on July 14, a day before earnings, then raised it by $105 to $1,488 on July 16, the highest on Wall Street.

$BLK-Morgan Stanley lowers BlackRock target to $1383 from $1430Overweight–$BTSG -KeyBanc raises BrightSpring Health target to $80 from $60Overweight-Morgan Stanley raises target to $80 from $71Overweight–$CABO-BNP Paribas upgrades Cable One to Neutral from…

— stock setter (@MarcJacksonLA) July 14, 2026

JPMorgan moved harder the same day, upgrading the stock from Neutral to Overweight and lifting its target 17% to $1,364.

Two smaller houses agreed. BMO Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of Bank of Montreal, reiterated Buy at $1,300 on July 17, while Keefe, Bruyette and Woods (KBW), a broker specialising in financial firms, opened coverage at the same target a day earlier.

None of those targets has been cut since. Because the stock has fallen in the meantime, the gap to those targets has widened rather than closed.

What the Bullish BlackRock Bets Are Riding On

BlackRock reported $15.34 trillion in assets under management on July 15, with revenue up 31% to $7.08 billion and net inflows of $191.7 billion.

One number undercuts the rest. Big institutions supplied only about $2.34 billion of those inflows, so nearly all the growth came from ETFs and everyday investors. This aligns with the fact that institutional money or rather big money mostly stayed silent. That metric now improving, courtesy of CMF, could be a good sign.

BLACKROCK AUM $15.34T, EST. $15.19T || 2Q FIXED INCOME NET INFLOWS $92.10B || 2Q ADJ EPS $13.91, EST. $12.66 || 2Q REV. $7.08B, EST. $6.82B || 2Q NET INFLOWS $191.70B, EST. $175.92B || 2Q INSTITUTIONAL NET INFLOWS $2.34B || 2Q INSTITUTIONAL NET INFLOWS $2.34B || 2Q LONG-TERM…

— First Squawk (@FirstSquawk) July 15, 2026

Two newer businesses may matter more. BlackRock has joined a DTCC pilot on tokenised collateral alongside JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, covering Russell 1000 shares and Treasuries, with a formal launch due in October.

BREAKING: JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs join 50-firm DTCC pilot to tokenize Russell 1000 stocks and US Treasurys, per WSJ

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 15, 2026

It is also leading a debt sale of more than $12 billion for a Meta-backed data centre campus in El Paso, pulling it into the financing of the AI build-out.

BlackRock, $BLK, is leading a debt sale targeting at least $12 billion for its new El Paso data-center project backed by Meta, $META, Platforms, per WSJ

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) July 20, 2026

Markets seem to have priced in none of it. BlackRock stock is only up 7.44% over the past month, that too on results, but remains lower for the year, while Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup each gained more than 20%.

One risk sits against those bullish bank bets. BlackRock runs the largest spot Bitcoin ETF at roughly 735,000 BTC, but spot Bitcoin ETFs shed $225 million in one session in late July, with IBIT accounting for $202 million of it.

Bitcoin ETFs snap their inflow streak while Ethereum funds keep printing greenUS spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $225M on Thursday, ending a four-day run of inflows, with BlackRock's $IBIT accounting for $202M of the exit.Ethereum ETFs went the other way, pulling in $26M for a fifth… pic.twitter.com/RhP3cFXBU2

— BSCN (@BSCNews) July 24, 2026

Analysts call that demand wave-like rather than steady.

I feel like there's a spiritual parallel bt GLD and IBIT.. GLD got so popular so quickly that for ONE DAY in 2011 it was bigger than SPY, the biggest ETF in world. Then it went out of favor for years. IBIT, similarly reached $100b in assets for ONE DAY (a few hrs actually) and… pic.twitter.com/ACJEiyyIIW

— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 17, 2026

For any of the bullish bets to pay off, money flow has to cross back above zero. Until it does, the traders and the banks are right on paper and wrong on the tape.