SCHW closes the week at $99.10, down about 1.2% over five days and off 10% for the month, yet the stock's own short sellers have been cutting exposure and analysts remain firmly positive ahead of a Q3 earnings report due October 15.
The most notable positioning development this week is the sharp unwind in short interest. Shorts fell 11% over the past five days to roughly 1.1% of the free float, a level so low it barely registers as a bearish signal. The pullback is part of a broader retreat: shorts are down more than 10% over the past month too, even as the stock itself has given back ground. The borrow market confirms this is not a squeezed-out story. Availability is essentially unlimited, with more than 1.7 billion shares sitting in the lending pool, and the cost to borrow a negligible 0.36% annualised. The ORTEX short score of 29.7, in the 76th percentile for low short interest, reinforces the read that this is not a name where bears are building a meaningful case. The put/call ratio at 0.93 is modestly above its 20-day average of 0.89 but only 0.7 standard deviations from the mean, well within normal range. Closest peers painted a mixed picture: AMP slipped 2.9% on the week while and each closed roughly flat, leaving Schwab as the week's relative laggard among the brokerage group.
The Street broadly sides with the bulls. Most recent analyst actions, clustered around last quarter's print in late July, were target-price increases. Morgan Stanley, UBS, and Barclays all lifted targets, and Compass Point opened with a Buy in early August at $135. The mean target now sits at $125.45, roughly 27% above the current price. The one exception was BMO Capital, which downgraded to Market Perform ahead of Q2 results while keeping its target at $105, noting that the fundamental backdrop was becoming less compelling. The bull case centres on Schwab's balance-sheet self-help story: expensive wholesale borrowings are being repaid, and the sub-2%-yielding securities portfolio is gradually rolling into higher rates, a dynamic the bulls argue underpins durable multi-year net interest margin expansion. The FDIC call report data tracked by ORTEX Alt Data adds some texture here: the bank's net income has risen for seven consecutive quarters and net loans and leases for nine, though the dataset has not yet been tested as a leading indicator for the reported group figures, so these streaks are context, not a preview of the print. The bears, meanwhile, point to organic asset growth slowing to under 2% in 2026, margin pressure from higher funding costs, and the stock's continuing sensitivity to a market drawdown that would compress asset-based fees.
The insider register complicates the picture. Net insider selling over the past 90 days totals around $115 million, driven primarily by Co-Chairman Walter Bettinger and founder Charles Schwab himself. Bettinger sold roughly 74,000 shares at just above $110 in late August and Schwab sold 117,000 shares at $113 around the same time. Director Schwab-Pomerantz added a further $1 million sale in late August. None of these were under 10b5-1 pre-arranged plans, which makes them more discretionary in character than a scheduled disposal. That said, both Bettinger and Schwab also exercised options in the same period, and the offsetting mechanics of option grants and sales can reduce the net signal. The Charles and Helen Schwab Living Trust still holds nearly 50 million shares, keeping the founding family as a significant economic participant in the outcome. On the 13D register, Toronto-Dominion Bank filed a Schedule 13D/A in February 2025 showing a small residual stake of roughly 0.1%, the relic of the TD Ameritrade integration wind-down; it is activist-classified by filing type but carries no current activist intent at that size.
The valuation setup tells a muted story. The trailing P/E has compressed about 11% over the past 30 days to around 13.2x, pulled down by the stock's decline. Price-to-book has similarly contracted, falling roughly 0.46 points over the month to 3.2x. On EPS momentum, Schwab ranks in the 82nd percentile over 90 days, meaning estimate revisions have been running in a constructive direction even as the share price has pulled back. The gap between where the stock is trading and where analysts think it should be is the central tension going into October 15: the question is less whether the earnings recovery story is intact and more whether the pace of NIM expansion and balance sheet normalisation is fast enough to close that 27% discount to the mean target.
Watch whether the Q3 net interest margin print and updated full-year guidance language either narrow or widen the gap between the Street's $125 consensus and a stock that has now given back a month's worth of gains.
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