GS DeGrasse What's happening TODAY in Financials ..

GS DeGrasse - What's happening TODAY in Financials .. 22 Sep 2026 Christian DeGrasse · Goldman Sachs · Financials & REITs Sector Specialist Tue 22 Sep 2026, 12:53pm ET

A couple of cross currents are driving the tape in Financials: Agentic at Risk, Fed Hikes + Flatter Curve, and election chatter. AGENTS are the primary focus—largely on businesses with consumer touch points as the market prices in risk that agents narrow companies’ ability to monetize the consumer and change the landscape for lead generation and marketing. This comes amid greater excitement around Muse and other agent products, while the GS Consumer Inertia basket (GSXUSWCH) is one of our most actively traded baskets in recent sessions.

There was some chatter yesterday on personal insurance (ALL), with focus today broadening out to Personal Insurance peers (PGR, TRV, etc.), lead generators (investors have pointed to a couple of small- cap insurance lead generators down HSD%–LDD%), Insurance Brokers (GSHD up/down peers two days in a row), and Wealth Managers & Retail brokers (SCHW, LPPA, AMP, RJF).

Banks are also trading heavy, and feedback here is debated—but focus does remain on banks with business mix geared toward the Consumer (consumer deposits, wealth management). This may explain, from a high level, the relative outperformance in small- and mid-cap banks, which in aggregate have less fee businesses like wealth and greater mix in commercial deposits, versus large banks. Positioning and liquidity may also potentially be playing a part in today’s volatility.

Payments entered today where conversations were very comfortable around Visa and Mastercard’s positioning on Agentic, and how integrated card was into present agent capabilities. Questions here include whether the late-morning underperformance is either flow-of-funds driven—selling of liquid and owned financials—or worries around more direct wallet integration following announcement of a PayPal partnership. Most feedback thinks it is flow-of-funds driven so far.

As we move into the afternoon, price action is somewhat indicative of investors in Financials broadly pulling back and getting incrementally more defensive, with positioning starting to play a greater role in dispersion. Signs include CBRE and JLL underperforming peers by approximately 2%, large, liquid and defensive names viewed as having good technology (JPM), being well positioned on agentic (Visa), or weighted toward commercial exposure (insurance brokers) trading heavy, and choppy underperformance across various sectors without direct agent reads, such as exchanges.

In our view, this is indicative of the market pricing in an uncertainty discount as investors potentially try to get up to speed on implications and risk/reward for fundamentals. The market is also cognizant that in past choppy tapes dealing with AI, it was better to be more patient rather than defending day one.

Mitola highlights that volumes are high. We are seeing an uptick in thematic trading and a willingness to press names where an “agentic economy” presents a potential headwind, as well as a complete buyers’

strike with no signs of defense across the sector, similar to previous episodes year-to-date (AI risk, perpetual futures, etc.).

Plenty of debate and inbound interest is coming in on sectors where price action is more muted today as investors try to get ahead of the theme. Again, a common starting point appears to be interaction with the consumer. Source: Goldman Sachs FICC & Equities desk note, 22 Sep 2026.