Sifting through countless of stocks in the Capital Markets industry can be tedious, and sometimes two stocks are just too similar to judge which is the better investment. If you’re on the fence about investing in BlackRock, Inc. or MSCI Inc. because you’re not sure how they measure up, it’s important to compare them on a few factors before making your decision.

Read on to learn how BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc. compare based on key financial metrics to determine which better meets your investment needs.

About BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc.

BlackRock, Inc. is a publicly owned investment manager. The firm primarily provides its services to institutional, intermediary, and individual investors including corporate, public, union, and industry pension plans, insurance companies, third-party mutual funds, endowments, public institutions, governments, foundations, charities, sovereign wealth funds, corporations, official institutions, and banks. It also provides global risk management and advisory services. The firm manages separate client-focused equity, fixed income, and balanced portfolios. It also launches and manages open-end and closed-end mutual funds, offshore funds, unit trusts, and alternative investment vehicles including structured funds. The firm launches equity, fixed income, balanced, and real estate mutual funds. It also launches equity, fixed income, balanced, currency, commodity, and multi-asset exchange traded funds. The firm also launches and manages hedge funds. It invests in the public equity, fixed income, real estate, currency, commodity, and alternative markets across the globe. The firm primarily invests in growth and value stocks of small-cap, mid-cap, SMID-cap, large-cap, and multi-cap companies. It also invests in dividend-paying equity securities. The firm invests in investment grade municipal securities, government securities including securities issued or guaranteed by a government or a government agency or instrumentality, corporate bonds, and asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities. It employs fundamental and quantitative analysis with a focus on bottom-up and top-down approach to make its investments. The firm employs liquidity, asset allocation, balanced, real estate, and alternative strategies to make its investments. In real estate sector, it seeks to invest in Poland and Germany. The firm benchmarks the performance of its portfolios against various S&P, Russell, Barclays, MSCI, Citigroup, and Merrill Lynch indices. BlackRock, Inc. was founded in 1988 and is based in New York, New York with additional offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Boston, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Greenwich, Connecticut; Houston, Texas; Miami, Florida; Newport Beach, California; Palo Alto, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Princeton, New Jersey; San Francisco, California; Santa Monica, California; Seattle, Washington; Washington, DC; West Palm Beach, Florida; Wilmington, Delaware; Mexico; Canada; South Africa; Netherlands; Greece; Serbia; Belgium; Hungary; Denmark; Ireland; Scotland; Germany; Switzerland; England; Luxembourg; Spain; Italy; France; Sweden; Austria; India; China; Australia; Hong Kong; South Korea; Singapore; Taiwan; Japan; Colombia; Argentina; Peru; Chile; Brazil; UAE; Saudi Arabia; Israel.

MSCI Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides research-based data, analytics, and indexes, supported by advanced technology worldwide. The Index segment provides indexes for use in various areas of the investment process, including indexed financial products, such as ETFs, mutual funds, annuities, futures, options, structured products, and over-the-counter derivatives; performance benchmarking; portfolio construction and rebalancing; and asset allocation, as well as licenses GICS and GICS Direct. The Analytics segment offers risk management, performance attribution and portfolio management content, application, an integrated view of risk and return service, and an analysis of market, credit, liquidity, counterparty, and climate risk across asset classes; managed services, including consolidation of client portfolio data, review and reconciliation of input data and results, and customized reporting; and HedgePlatform to measure, evaluate, and monitor the risk of hedge fund investments. The Sustainability and Climate segment provides products and services that help institutional investors understand how ESG impacts the long-term risk and return of their portfolio and individual security-level investments; and data, ratings, research, and tools to assist investors navigate increasing regulation. The All Other – Private Assets segment comprises private credit, real estate and infrastructure data, benchmarks, return-analytics, climate assessments and market insights; business intelligence to real estate owners, managers, developers, and brokers; and offers investment decision support tools for private capital. The Private Capital Solutions segment offers tools to help private asset investors across mission-critical workflows, such as sourcing terms and conditions, evaluating operating performance, managing risk and other activities supporting private capital investment. MSCI Inc. was incorporated in 1998 and is based in New York, New York.

Latest Capital Markets and BlackRock, Inc., MSCI Inc. Stock News

As of August 20, 2026, BlackRock, Inc. had a $176.5 billion market capitalization, compared to the Capital Markets median of $3.1 million. BlackRock, Inc.’s stock is up 8.1% in 2026, down 1.5% in the previous five trading days and up 1.01% in the past year.

Currently, BlackRock, Inc.’s price-earnings ratio is 27.2. BlackRock, Inc.’s trailing 12-month revenue is $27.3 billion with a 24.1% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was 30.6%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $56.238 per share for the current fiscal year. BlackRock, Inc. currently has a 2.0% dividend yield.

As of August 20, 2026, MSCI Inc. had a $41.3 billion market cap, putting it in the 92nd percentile of all stocks. MSCI Inc.’s stock is down 1.8% in 2026, down 1% in the previous five trading days and up 0.1% in the past year.

Currently, MSCI Inc.’s price-earnings ratio is 31.1. MSCI Inc.’s trailing 12-month revenue is $3.3 billion with a 40.7% net profit margin. Year-over-year quarterly sales growth most recently was 12.2%. Analysts expect adjusted earnings to reach $19.661 per share for the current fiscal year. MSCI Inc. currently has a 1.4% dividend yield.

How We Compare BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc. Stock Grades

Stock evaluation requires access to huge amounts of data and the knowledge and time to sift through it all, make sense of financial ratios, read income statements and analyze recent stock movements. AAII created A+ Investor, a robust data suite that condenses data research in an actionable and customizable way suitable for investors of all knowledge levels, to help investors streamline and work through such data.

AAII’s proprietary stock grades come with A+ Investor. These offer intuitive A‐F grades for each of five key investing factors: value, growth, momentum, earnings estimate revisions and quality. Here, we’ll take a closer look at BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc.’s stock grades to see how they measure up against one another.

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BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc. Growth Grades

Company	Ticker	Growth
BlackRock, Inc.	BLK	B
MSCI Inc.	MSCI	A

The foundation of growth investing is seeking out stocks of companies exhibiting strong, consistent and prolonged growth that is expected to continue into the future.

In order to compute the growth score and assign it a letter grade, the percentile ranks for each of three components‐consistency of annual sales growth, five-year sales growth rankings adjusted for extreme levels, and consistency of positive annual cash from operations‐must be determined. These three rank figures are added together, and the sum is ranked against the entire stock universe to arrive at a company’s Growth Score to create an equal distribution of grades.

The companies in the bottom 20% of the stock universe receive Growth Grades of F, considered to be very weak, while those in the top 20% receive A grades, which are considered very strong.

BlackRock, Inc. has a Growth Score of 77, which is Strong. MSCI Inc. has a Growth Score of 95, which is Very Strong.

The Growth Grade Winner: MSCI Inc.

As you can clearly see from the Growth Grade breakdown above, MSCI Inc. has a more attractive growth grade than BlackRock, Inc.. For investors who focus solely on how a company is growing relative to other companies in the same industry, MSCI Inc. could be a good stock to add to their portfolio. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc.’s Quality Grades

Company	Ticker	Quality
BlackRock, Inc.	BLK	C
MSCI Inc.	MSCI	A

Like the Value Grade, AAII’s A+ Investor Quality Grade comes from the percentile rank of key metrics. Specifically, the Quality Score is the percentile rank of the average of the percentile ranks of return on assets (ROA), return on invested capital (ROIC), gross profit relative to assets, buyback yield, change in total liabilities to assets, accruals, Z double prime bankruptcy risk (Z) score and the F-Score.

The score is variable, meaning it can consider all eight measures or, should any of the eight measures not be valid, the remaining measures that are valid. To be assigned a Quality Score, stocks must have a valid (non-null) measure and corresponding ranking for at least four of the eight quality measures.

The Quality Score is used to assess the underlying “quality” of a particular stock. A higher-quality stock possesses traits associated with upside potential and reduced downside risk. Backtesting of the Quality Grade shows that stocks with higher grades, on average, outperformed stocks with lower grades over the period of 1998 through 2019.

Stocks receive better grades (higher scores) for having higher scores for the quality subcomponents and worse grades (lower scores) for lower scores for the subcomponents.

BlackRock, Inc. has a Quality Score of 48, which is Average. MSCI Inc. has a Quality Score of 96, which is Very Strong.

The Quality Grade Winner: MSCI Inc.

As you can clearly see from the Quality Grade breakdown above, MSCI Inc. has a better overall quality grade than BlackRock, Inc.. For investors who are looking for companies with higher quality than others in the same industry, MSCI Inc. could be a good stock to add to their portfolios. However, it’s important for investors to analyze multiple factors based on a wide range of metrics before deciding whether to buy.

BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc.’s Momentum Grades

Company	Ticker	Momentum
BlackRock, Inc.	BLK	C
MSCI Inc.	MSCI	D

Momentum grades help to uncover stocks experiencing anomalously high rates of return; research finds that stocks with high relative levels of momentum tend to outperform, whereas those with low levels of momentum tend to continue underperforming. Momentum is based on the price change of a stock over a specified period relative to all other stocks.

Typically, AAII looks at the weighted relative strength over the trailing four quarters. The weighted four-quarter relative strength rank is the relative price change for each of the past four quarters. The most recent quarterly price change is given a weight of 40% and each of the three previous quarters are given a weighting of 20%.

BlackRock, Inc. has a Momentum Score of 43, which is Average. MSCI Inc. has a Momentum Score of 34, which is Weak.

The Momentum Stock Winner: No Clear Winner

Neither BlackRock, Inc. or MSCI Inc. has a strong enough Momentum Grade to be considered a “winner.” Investors considering these companies should do additional due diligence and research to see if either could be a good addition to their portfolios. It’s important to look at a wide range of financial metrics in order to determine if BlackRock, Inc. or MSCI Inc. is the better investment when it comes to momentum.

Other BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc. Grades

In addition to Growth, Quality and Momentum, A+ Investor also provides grades for Value and Estimate Revisions.

Earnings estimate revisions scores take into account the magnitude of a company’s earnings surprise in its last two reported fiscal quarters. Often, surprises beget further surprises‐or at least continued sales growth (the exact opposite is generally true, too).

Successful stock investing involves buying low and selling high, so stock valuation is an important consideration for stock selection. Buying stocks that are going to go up typically means buying stocks that are undervalued in the first place, although momentum investors may argue that point.

These 2 key factors, when combined with the above, provide a holistic view into a particular stock. Further, by joining A+ Investor you can see whether BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc. pass any of our 60+ stock screens that have outperformed the market since their creation.

So, Which Is the Better Investment, BlackRock, Inc. or MSCI Inc. Stock?

Overall, BlackRock, Inc. stock has a Growth Score of 77, Momentum Score of 43 and Quality Score of 48.

MSCI Inc. stock has a Growth Score of 95, Momentum Score of 34 and Quality Score of 96.

Comparing BlackRock, Inc. and MSCI Inc.’s grades, scores and metrics can act as a solid basis to determine whether they may be a good investment or not. You’ll also want to look at your portfolio’s asset allocation as well as your risk tolerance and financial goals to see if either of these stocks would make a good fit for you. AAII can help you figure out which investments align with your individual needs and preferences.

Investors are encouraged to do their own due diligence and research. In this way, individuals can effectively become managers of their own assets‐without having to rely on others for financial independence. You can count on AAII for timeless articles on financial planning and stock-picking, unbiased research and actionable analysis.

A+ Investor adds to our qualitative teaching with a powerful data suite to help you whittle down investment choices to find stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) or mutual funds that meet your needs.

AAII Disclaimer

We make no representations or warranties that any investor will, or is likely to, achieve profits similar to those shown, because past, hypothetical or simulated performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Before making an investment decision, you should consider your circumstances and whether the information on our content is applicable to your situation. This information was prepared in good faith, and we accept no liability for any errors or omissions. The full disclaimer can be read here.