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SCHW heads into its October 22 earnings event having already endured one painful post-results session, with analysts scrambling to reset targets and options traders turning notably more bullish than usual.
The stock fell 5% on October 15 after the Q3 print, extending a month-long slide that has now taken the shares down roughly 15% to $91.96. Options positioning has shifted in response. The put/call ratio has dropped to 0.88, about 1.2 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.93, meaning call demand has actually picked up relative to puts despite the selloff. That sits closer to the 52-week low of 0.74 than the high of 1.46, a setup that reads more opportunistic than defensive. Borrow conditions tell the same story: short interest is just 1.1% of the free float, cost to borrow has collapsed to 0.06% from above 0.40% for most of the prior month, and availability is effectively unlimited with over 1.7 billion shares available to lend. There is no meaningful short-side pressure here.
The analyst response to the Q3 miss was swift and uniform on Friday. Barclays, UBS, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Evercore ISI and Truist all trimmed price targets on October 16, though none changed their ratings. JP Morgan's Kenneth Worthington remains the most constructive, holding Overweight with a $147 target even after cutting from $150. TD Cowen and Citizens both reiterated Buy-equivalent ratings and held their targets at $129 and $120 respectively. The consensus mean has settled at roughly $118, still implying about 28% upside from current levels. The debate between bulls and bears has not shifted in character since previous previews: bulls point to 3Q26 adjusted EPS of $1.69 (up 29% year on year), record quarterly revenue of $7.17 billion, and $190.4 billion in net new core assets, the highest quarterly intake on record. Bears focus on net interest margin coming in at a soft 3.04%, transactional sweep cash declining roughly $12.5 billion sequentially to $429.5 billion even as wholesale funding rose, and the underlying sensitivity of the earnings model to any further rate pressure. Valuation has compressed sharply: the PE multiple is down more than two points over 30 days to 12.2x, and price-to-book has fallen to 3.0x.
The company's FDIC call report data, published by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and tracked by ORTEX Alt Data, shows Schwab's insured bank charters have grown net loans and leases for nine consecutive quarters and net income for seven consecutive quarters through April 2026. The FDIC series has not yet accumulated enough history to test whether it leads the company's reported figures, so it provides balance-sheet context rather than a signal on the print.
The October 22 release will test whether the record asset-gathering and EPS growth story can hold investor confidence when net interest margin remains below the 3.00% to 3.25% range management has guided for the year-end exit, and whether the franchise's scale can translate into the operating leverage that a still-discounted valuation multiple demands.
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