Schwab drops 6.11% as Meta's Muse stirs AI disruption fear

The selloff did not follow an earnings miss or a rate decision. It followed a narrative. Meta's assistant Muse launched on September 8 and reached the top of Apple's US App Store within two weeks, and on the same day Schwab dropped, the RIA platform Altruist announced its own AI financial-planning agent covering retirement, tax, and estate strategy. Two events on one day fed the same worry: that software will handle the switching and shopping customers have always been too busy to do.

The Federal Reserve raised rates 25 basis points to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, the first hike since 2023. The memory is 2023, when rising rates triggered client cash sorting and drained Schwab's cheapest funding. That backdrop may help explain why rate-sensitive brokerages have been sold since — though the report notes the rate hike actually cuts the other way for Schwab.

Schwab's second quarter, however, argues clients are consolidating onto the platform rather than drifting away. On the earnings call, CEO Rick Wurster framed AI as a way to reach more clients rather than lose them, and said developer team productivity improved 15% to 20% over the past year. The outcome hinges on whether Muse and similar agents change client behavior in practice, or whether the market applied the disruption thesis to the wrong name.