New York, Feb 11, 2026, 06:23 ET — Premarket
- LPL Financial shares hovered around Tuesday’s closing level, following their 8.3% drop.
- Fintech player Altruist’s new AI tax-planning tool sent ripples through brokerage and wealth management names.
- Traders are eyeing whether the selloff will carry over into another session.
Shares of LPL Financial barely budged in early Wednesday trading after taking a sharp hit the day before, as the market tried to size up the pace at which artificial intelligence might streamline tax planning and other lucrative advisory work. The stock loitered near $360.6, following an 8.3% slide to $360.58 at Tuesday’s close.
This shift is significant. Tax planning remains one of the last strongholds for advisers earning substantial human fees, but traders are no longer convinced those fees will hold. Just a week ago, the consensus was different. Now, they’re placing bets right away, with no interest in waiting for the next quarterly update.
Brokerage stocks got hammered Tuesday, triggered by Altruist’s launch of AI-based tax planning on its Hazel platform. LPL and Raymond James each tumbled over 8%, Charles Schwab lost more than 7%, and Ameriprise ended down 6.2%. “Sell first and ask questions later,” one strategist said, noting, “another sector bites the dust” with every new AI headline. Analysts at Citizens pushed back, saying advisers still justify fees with “judgment, behavioral coaching, and personalization.” Sean Dunlop of Morningstar, meanwhile, called the “selloff already overdone.” Reuters
Altruist says Hazel’s latest feature can scan 1040s, paystubs and similar files, then spit out tailored tax strategies and quick “what-if” scenario models for advisers—often in just minutes. Founder and CEO Jason Wenk didn’t mince words, labeling traditional tax planning “slow and mentally draining.” He added that this update “raises the bar on outcomes” and “makes average advice a lot harder to justify.” Business Wire
Altruist targets independent advisers, among them registered investment advisers—firms that collect fees to manage clients’ money. It’s going up against the major custodians, too: these are the companies handling client assets and the nuts and bolts of trading, billing, reporting. In this part of the industry, size and reputation carry real weight.
LPL, wedged in the center of this ecosystem, isn’t sweating the idea of clients dropping their advisers overnight. The big concern: tools like Hazel drive down the cost of hands-on planning, changing how the firm talks about price in a business built on recurring fees.
Still, there’s a catch with the bearish case. Sharper software or not, firms face the challenge of nudging clients to make moves—plus, advice comes with compliance hurdles that can limit just how much automation is allowed. Big brokerages? They might just snap up, develop, or fold AI into their existing systems, flipping a potential threat into a selling point.
Traders now look ahead to the postponed U.S. January jobs data, set for release at 8:30 a.m. ET Wednesday. The January CPI numbers arrive Friday, also at 8:30 a.m. ET. Both reports can jolt bond yields, shifting how investors value financial stocks in the aftermath of shocks like Tuesday’s.
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