Financials Positioning Update: US Financials Sector Specialist Commentary Banks • Insurance • Diversified Financials

Research evidence excerpt

Rob O'Dwyer - Specialist Sales - US Financials AC

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

North America Specialist Sales

JPMORGAN

14 August 2026

Financials Positioning Update

Rob O’Dwyer

This is a new product in collaboration with the JPM Positioning Intelligence team . Many thanks to my colleagues John Schlegel

and Sunny Potharaju for providing the data below. We plan to refresh this on a monthly basis.

Key Observations from Positioning Data

Leadership within financials remains in banks though recent momentum lies in diversified financials (brokers, asset

managers, exchanges and payments) where we have seen meaningful short covering.

Insurance remains a source of funds in the space and has amongst the most negative z-score for exposure amongst all

sub-sectors.

Div Fins change in z-score since Mar 31 is the second largest in the market (only after tech hardware) though overall

exposure vs history is still low, Div Fins in their 39th percentile since 2018.

Within financials, it maybe surprising that Regional Banks (JP2RBK) have the most momentum and are being bought

quickly - 5d and 10d net buying are at highs, driven by both longs added and shorts covered. Positioning remains

elevated. I struggle to reconcile this with fundamentals, perhaps driven by passive flows increasing exposure to financials

via laggards/KRE?

Large cap bank (JP2LBK) ownership is close to its highs.

Alts have been a major focus of late and there is some evidence that this sector is being bought, though in the aggregate

the data would suggest that most of the buying over the past month has been short covering.

Overall Positioning Trends

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