Schwab Shares Fall 6% as Traders Bet on AI Disruption in Brokerages

Charles Schwab shares fell 6% Tuesday, while trading in its options surged as investors weighed whether Meta’s Muse might take work away from brokerages. The selloff is a market judgment about a possible threat, not evidence that Muse has displaced a broker.

The bet against Schwab

Schwab was down more than 8% since Meta announced Muse, according to CNBC’s account of the selloff. Tuesday’s options volume topped five times its average, with nearly twice as many puts bought as calls, according to Cboe LiveVol data cited by CNBC. Puts can gain value when a stock falls, making that imbalance a sign of bearish positioning.

The pressure extended beyond Schwab. LPL Financial fell 7% Tuesday, Raymond James Financial lost 3.5%, and Interactive Brokers slipped 1%. The financial-sector fund XLF declined 2%. That broader drop makes it hard to pin the day’s losses entirely on Muse; higher interest rates may also have weighed on the group.

What Muse can—and cannot—do with money

Muse launched earlier this month with financial-account connections powered by Plaid. People can choose to connect accounts and share information such as balances, transactions and investment holdings. Plaid says that context lets Muse offer personalized guidance and help users set financial goals, rather than respond without knowing their finances.

Meta describes Muse more broadly as an agent that can act across connected services, within access limits chosen by the user. That design helps explain the concern: an assistant people use for other daily tasks could also become a place to review their finances. But its financial role has a clear boundary.

Meta’s assistant says it will neither trade for users nor give financial advice. When asked about work resembling an advisor’s, it describes tracking investments, measuring progress toward goals and analyzing how holdings fit together. Those are useful financial tasks, but they are not the same as executing a trade or making a recommendation.

Not every broker faces the same threat

Jimmy Lee, chief executive of The Wealth Consulting Group, told CNBC he sees little competition from Meta for Schwab’s role as a custodian, which holds assets for advisors and clients. He expects more disruption for financial middlemen that charge for work such as billing, reporting and trading. His distinction matters: helping someone understand a portfolio is different from replacing the firm that holds it.

The market drew a different line around Robinhood: its shares rose Tuesday to another high for the year. Robinhood launched agents in May that can trade and manage portfolios for users. Its options trading also leaned bullish Tuesday, with twice as many calls bought as puts. The contrast shows how traders are separating firms within brokerage, though a day’s price moves do not settle which business will benefit from AI.

Schwab has its own AI response

Schwab is not waiting for the contest to play out. Last week, its advisor-services business announced work with Anthropic on Claude for Financial Advisors. In May, Schwab launched an AI tool that includes tailored analysis from its research arm. Those efforts target work inside its existing business, while Muse offers consumers a way to bring account information into an everyday assistant.

Brokerage stocks have faced this kind of question before. In February, the group fell after Altruist said its Hazel platform could create tax-planning strategies for individuals and advisors; Schwab later recovered some of its losses. The latest selloff poses a narrower question than whether AI will replace brokers: which parts of their work can an account-connected assistant actually take over?