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Today, the Facebook black hole sucked yet another casualty into their never-ending post-IPO news onslaught: Morgan Stanley. The bulge bank is currently under investigation by regulators for their potential involvement in some Facebook pre-IPO foul play.

As the lead underwriter of Facebook’s IPO, Morgan Stanley apparently had some inside info on the social network in regards to the future success investors could see after the company went public. Rueters reported that a Morgan Stanley analyst had downsized his revenue projection for Facebook after the network filed documents with the SEC stating there was a chance their revenue could struggle as it’s users attention was turned to mobile devices. The question now that’s ruffling feathers of the FINRA and SEC members is ‘did certain investors receive privileged pre-IPO information that should have been shared more liberally?’

This allegation brings up a very interesting correlation: how the massive influx in tech startups, and in technological advancements in general, is affecting the big banks. For Morgan Stanley, it’s in equity underwriting. An article on CNNMoney revealed the firm has landed deals to underwrite IPOs of some of the biggest names in the web biz, like LinkedIn, Groupon, and of course, Facebook – which have all generated $1.2 billion in fees. As the tech revolution keeps on trucking, Morgan Stanley becomes increasingly reliant on its tech deals for revenue generation. Right now, 13% of their investment banking fees are produced by these deals (Goldman pulls in about 9%, while JPMorgan takes 7% of theirs from tech).

Now this is where things could get messy for Morgan Stanley. If the looming Facebook-IPO-info situation does blow up, their juicy chunk of equity underwriting fees could be looking a little less hearty – fast.

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.

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I bet right about now Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan is quite pleased to have the Facebook fiasco all over the news to take some of the spotlight off his little derivatives problem. As I write this (Tuesday morning), JPM is up 5% and FB is down nearly the same amount on the day. Personally, I think there’s way too much being made of the whole Facebook IPO story – though I do think the NASDAQ system problems is an interesting story, especially after the BATS failed IPO a little while back – but admittedly the rest of the news has gotten rather stagnant. I actually begged CNBC via Twitter on Friday to talk about something, anything, but Facebook, but struggled to come up with a good alternate subject.

Naturally, there’s a blame game going on as to whose fault it is the stock has taken a dive. We can never really know how things would have turned out if the NASDAQ system had functioned properly, but that won’t prevent folks from trying to do so. Finding someone to blame, of course, is a favorite pastime these days. Traders certainly do it when they take losses. After all, it can’t be my fault I lost money on my position. It must be those evil banks, unethical brokers, or speculators gone wild (unless, of course, they are moving prices the direction I want).  Yes, I am a speculator. Obviously, I’m talking about the other speculators, though – especially the ones with computers faster than mine. Yeah, the high frequency guys. It’s all their fault! They’re preventing me from moving out of the 99% and in to the 1%. Something really needs to be done about them.

Thankfully, today we’ve returned to the on-going back and forth between European central bankers and political leaders over what to do about the mess. It’s kind of refreshing after the all-Facebook-all-the-time chatter. Everybody seems to want Greece to stay in the euro, but it looks like we won’t find out until the middle of June as to whether the Greek people share that view. You’ll notice the German rhetoric on the subject of austerity and whatnot has cooled considerably. Could that be because suddenly they aren’t doing all that great either and the weak euro that’s coming out of all this actually tends to help Germany more than most on the export side of things?

Then there’s the on-going question of whether the US can remain out of the fray and avoid too much in the way of economic damage from all the European issues. I’m moving to England in the fall to start work on a PhD, so you know I’m looking for the dollar to go on a fantastic run higher to make my greenbacks go farther. Unfortunately, the UK retained the pound rather than join the euro. The photo going around of David Cameron with arms raised celebrating Chelsea’s performance against Bayern Munich in the Champions League final on Saturday (at last an English team beat a German one in penalties!)  alongside a much less enthused Angela Merkel could just as easily represent the British feeling about having their own currency through all the mess.  I’m hoping the Bank of England decides to do more QE. That ought to sink the pound.

In the meantime, back to my charts.

Oh look! There’s a cup-and-handle setting up on the weekly USD Index chart. Maybe the markets will help me get cheaper pounds without the QE.

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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.