Bloomberg notes something interesting about Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs: the correlation between the two firms' daily stock movements is down 17 percent this year from the average over the last decade. In the third quarter, the correlation dropped to the lowest for any quarter since 2003, reports Bloomberg.

So are people finally waking up to the fact that Morgan Stanley is morphing into a firm quite distinct from Goldman Sachs, which increasingly seems like even more of an outlier?

Morgan Stanley, under James Gorman, has de-emphasized trading risk and focused on less volatile businesses like retail brokerage. The firm has cut the share of revenue from investment banking and trading to 54 percent for the year ending June 30 from 65 percent in 2006.

Meanwhile, Goldman's trading and investment-banking revenue rose to 80 percent from 75 percent. Goldman increasingly appears to be a bank apart. But the firm may experience something of a shift in the composition of its earnings, away from trading and more toward banking.

However, it does not seem likely, despite much talk over the past two years, that Goldman will make a significant foray into the world of commercial banking at the retail level, despite its ownership of an industrial bank in Utah.

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