These charts show how US investment banks are crushing their rivals

US investment banks are dominating their European rivals.

American banks are beginning to increase their global investment banking market share for a number of reasons, according to a note from Morgan Stanley's Huw Van Steenis.

It is partly a result of the US having relatively larger, deeper, and faster-growing markets than rivals in places like Europe, according to the note.

It's also because US banks have a relative capital advantage to those rivals, and because they have "strong and improving credit ratings, which help gain more share, particularly in FICC [fixed income, currencies and commodities trading]."

Their European counterparts in contrast are struggling.

Regulators in that part of the world continue to crack down on banks and push for changes, like limiting the ratio of a bank's total exposure to how much capital it holds in case of system-wide shocks.

European banks are also making lower returns than their American counterparts, according to the note. And a handful of those banks, including, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, BNP, and Standard Chartered are expected to shrink in size and start focusing more on their most profitable parts.

That can only mean good things for the US banks, which are expected to step in to the gaps their rivals leave behind.

Here's how that will look.