There’s been incrementally positive headlines involving a trio of Club stocks — Amazon (AMZN), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Apple (AAPL). Here’s our take on the news and what it means for our investment outlook. Amazon hikes seller fees through holidays The news: Amazon is taking another step to combat inflationary pressures across its e-commerce operations. Between Oct. 15 and Jan. 14, 2023, third-party sellers who use Amazon’s fulfillment service will be charged 35 cents per item sold in the U.S. and Canada. This will be added on to traditional fees they pay to use the program known as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), through which the company retrieves, packs and ships items on behalf of the third-party sellers. In an email to sellers obtained Tuesday by CNBC’s Annie Palmer , Amazon said the reason it’s putting this holiday surcharge in place for the first time is because “expenses are reaching new heights.” The Club’s take: This is a welcome development for investors, representing yet another step from management to bring soaring costs under control as it pledged to do. Remember: Amazon announced an increase to the price of a Prime membership in February. Then, in April, it implemented a fuel and inflation surcharge on existing FBA fees after weathering $6 billion in incremental costs in its January-to-March quarter. In the April-to-June quarter, Amazon saw about $4 billion in incremental costs tied partly to higher fuel costs and freight rates. Those inflationary pressures, coupled with Amazon’s own overexpansion issues as it sought to meet Covid-fueled online-shopping demand, really dented the company’s profitability. We’re willing to be patient with management as it works to restore margins, as we’ve said before, but that makes this temporary increase to seller fees particularly encouraging. Its impact should be felt pretty much immediately, boosting not only top-line revenue but earnings, too. We like the stock here. That said, just how much of a benefit this new fee may provide is not entirely clear. Estimates vary. UBS wrote in a note to clients that it could add to $870 million to fourth-quarter revenue, based on its assumptions around the number of products third-party merchants will sell in the period. UBS analysts acknowledge 100% of the holiday fee could flow through to the bottom line, in which case they project Amazon could deliver an operating margin of 4.6% in Q4, up from current projections of 4.1%. Morgan Stanley, for its part, forecasts a $660 million boost to earnings before interest and taxes with $570 million in Q4 and $90 million Q1 2023. Morgan Stanley files to launch ETFs The news: Morgan Stanley plans to launch four exchange-traded funds, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission . The ETFs all fall under the umbrella of the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement. Here are the names of the four ETFs, per the SEC filing: Calvert International Responsible Index ETF Calvert US Large-Cap Core Responsible Index ETF Calvert US Large-Cap Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Index ETF Calvert US Mid-Cap Core Responsible Index ETF As indicated above, the brand associated with the ETFs is Calvert, a firm that’s now part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Calvert had been owned by asset manager Eaton Vance, which Morgan Stanley acquired last year as part of the bank’s revenue diversification plan. Each of the ETFs are designed to track the underlying stock index created by Calvert, which calls itself a “pioneer” in responsible investing over the past four decades. The Club’s take: It’s hard to discern the immediate financial impact that these four ETFs could provide to Morgan Stanley — assuming they clear the regulatory process and get listed on a U.S. exchange. The primary reasons for the uncertainty is we don’t yet know what the funds’ expense ratios will be and what investors’ reception to the ETFs will be. ESG-focused ETFs are a crowded space, in general. However, we find the news of these ETF filings noteworthy because it speaks to a central part of our investment thesis in Morgan Stanley: revenue diversification. Under the leadership of CEO James Gorman, Morgan Stanley is trying to be less dependent on the traditional Wall Street businesses of investment banking and trading, which, as we’ve seen lately, can be prone to cyclical downturns. The firm has bought Eaton Vance and E-Trade to accomplish a shift toward the more stable, fee-based revenue streams associated with asset management. It’s a key reason why we own Morgan Stanley and have been willing to stick with the stock this year despite the economic slowdown fears that have weighed on the group. We learned in March that Morgan Stanley planned to launch an ETF platform this year , and this fresh SEC filing appears to signal additional progress in doing that. Morgan Stanley’s transformation is a multi-year story, requiring investor patience, but nevertheless we like to see these encouraging updates. Plus, a $20 billion buyback program and a dividend yield of roughly 3.4% pays us to wait . Apple may move more production out of China The news: Apple Watch and MacBook assembly could begin to take place in Vietnam for the first time, Nikkei Asia reported Wednesday. Citing three sources familiar with the situation, the newspaper said Foxconn and Luxshare Precision Industry are doing “test production” of the Apple Watch at facilities in northern Vietnam. With regards to the MacBook, Nikkei Asia said it learned from two sources that the California-based tech giant has asked suppliers to establish a test production line in the country. Both products have historically been made in China. Outside of China, Vietnam is Apple’s second-largest country for production. The Club’s take: Apple has been shaking up its manufacturing footprint in recent years, and Wednesday’s Nikkei report indicates there could be even more on the horizon. From an investment standpoint, that theoretically makes the company’s supply chain more resilient and less vulnerable to large disruptions in one place. In 2020, Apple reportedly began to make some AirPods in Vietnam , and a few months ago Nikkei reported it also was moving some iPad production to the Southeast Asian nation. Now, there’s the Apple Watch and MacBook developments. A key accelerant of Apple’s supply chain diversification was the U.S.-China trade war instigated by former President Donald Trump, and the Covid pandemic appears to have added to the urgency. In the company’s latest quarter, for example, Apple “lost the primary source of supply for Mac units” because of virus lockdowns in Shanghai, CEO Tim Cook said on the post-earnings call. Those supply constraints ultimately put a damper on MacBook sales, according to the company. Viewed through that lens, even if the shift of production to Vietnam doesn’t happen overnight, we would be pleased to see more resiliency could be coming to Apple’s supply chain. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long MS, AMZN, AAPL. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. 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