European Diversified Financials: Investor Positioning Into Q2:26 Results - Exchanges Lead QoQ Gains, Italian Asset Managers Lag

Research evidence excerpt

European Diversified Financials: Investor Positioning Into Q2:26 Results - Exchanges Lead QoQ Gains, Italian Asset Managers Lag

European Diversified Financials UBS Research

Executive summary

When it comes to near-term share price movements, positioning is as important (if not

more) than fundamentals. With the Q2:26 earnings season kicking off next week, we

thought it would be helpful to show how investors are currently positioned amongst the

European diversified financials stocks.

Figure 2: Summary Table of Crowding Score

Sum mar y T abl e o f C row din

g S core

Source: UBS Quant, UBS Analysis. Data as of 07/07/2026; The sub-sector averages are calculated on a market-cap weighted basis.

Overall, the Platforms (including the UK asset gatherers: St James's Place and Quilter)

sector was the fourth most crowded sub-sector across all the 30 European sub-sectors

we track - see Figure 4EUDiversifiedFinancialssub-sectorscrowdingscoresvs.otherEuropeansectors. As a group, the Platforms have an average crowding score of

+4.7. Within the platforms, IGG (+9.7) and STJ (+8.3) are the most crowded, ranking in

the top 6% of all stocks in Europe, followed by ALLFG (+6.3) and QLT (+6.1). Only the

Nordic names, SAVE (-1.0) and AZA (-3.6), had negative crowding scores within the

platforms.

It is worth noting that a crowding score greater than +8 or less than -8 is

considered statistically significant.

After the Platforms, the crowding scores of the Exchanges ranked in the top quartile of

the 30 European sub-sectors. The Exchanges have an average crowding score of +3.8,

driven by LSEG (+11.7) followed by lower scores from ENX (+4.1) and FLOW (+2.2),

while DB1 has a negative crowding score of -4.6.

The Public Market Asset Managers and Italian Asset Managers/ Gatherers ranked