Charles Schwab Corp. reported record third-quarter results on Thursday, with net revenue climbing to $7.17 billion, up 17% from a year earlier, and core net new assets — the money clients move into Schwab accounts — hitting an all-time quarterly high of $190.4 billion, up 38% year over year. Yet the brokerage giant's shares fell as much as 4% in premarket trading, slipping to around $92.96 from Wednesday's $96.80 close.

Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.69, up 29% from the same quarter last year and ahead of the roughly $1.66 analysts had expected, according to Investing.com's earnings call coverage. GAAP net income reached $2.9 billion, or $1.62 a share, also up 29%. But revenue landed just shy of the roughly $7.2 billion Wall Street had modeled — a shortfall of less than half a percent that traders seized on anyway.

The company, which moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Westlake, Texas, said clients opened 1.2 million new brokerage accounts during the quarter and that trading activity surged, with average daily trades up 44% to 10.7 million. Trading revenue rose 16% to roughly $1.2 billion, while asset-management and administration fees hit a record $1.9 billion, up 14%. Total client assets climbed 15% to $13.33 trillion, according to the earnings release filed with the SEC.

Why the stock fell anyway

Investors appeared more focused on balance-sheet detail than the headline beats. Executives flagged a quarter-over-quarter decline in transactional sweep cash — the cash parked in brokerage accounts that Schwab lends out to generate interest income — and guided full-year 2026 revenue growth and net interest margin toward the lower end of prior ranges. Net interest margin did expand to 3.04% for the quarter, but the cash drawdown raised questions about where that growth trajectory heads next.

CFO Mike Verdeschi told analysts the cash decline reflected "improved client sentiment and more money moving back into markets," rather than a structural shift in client behavior.

CEO Rick Wurster framed the quarter around client growth rather than the market's reaction, saying in the earnings release that clients "opened 1.2 million new brokerage accounts and entrusted Schwab with $190.4 billion in core net new assets," an annualized growth rate of 5.8%. The company's adjusted pre-tax profit margin expanded to 54.8%, about 350 basis points higher than a year earlier, per the official Schwab earnings release.

The results extend a run of record quarters for the brokerage, which has posted back-to-back all-time highs in both revenue and net new asset flows through 2026 as retail investors and registered investment advisors continue consolidating accounts at the firm. Schwab shares remain roughly 19% below their 52-week high of $114.53 set earlier this year.

Analysts on the earnings call, including representatives from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, pressed management on net interest margin trends and the outlook for cash balances heading into 2027, signaling that investors will be watching the next several monthly asset-flow updates closely for confirmation that Thursday's cash dip was temporary.