US brokerage shares slide in latest sell-off driven by new AI tool

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Shares in Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley and Raymond James sank on Tuesday, in the latest bout of selling triggered by investor concerns about the disruption AI start-ups will have on established companies.

The sell-off of several US financial services companies began in late-morning trading after fintech Altruist announced the launch of a tax-planning tool within its AI platform, Hazel.

Investors dumped shares in traditional financial services groups that would typically be sought out by clients for their advisers’ guidance on wealth management and tax strategies.

Schwab and Raymond James had their share price gains for 2026 wiped out, with the stocks closing 7.4 per cent and 8.7 per cent lower, respectively. Rival Stifel Financial was down 3.8 per cent and ETrade parent Morgan Stanley shed 2.4 per cent.

The moves echo a sell-off that gripped Wall Street last week, as investors endured three sessions of heavy selling that analysts said had been partly brought about by AI company Anthropic’s launch of marketing, legal and finance tools for its Claude Cowork platform.

Software companies bore the brunt of last week’s sell-off as investors fretted about the impact AI could have on their businesses. The combined $660bn that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft recently said they would spend this year on AI build-out served as a reminder that most companies were not scaling back their ambitions around the technology.

On Monday, shares in US insurance brokers including Willis Towers Watson, Aon and Ryan Speciality fell sharply after OpenAI said it would integrate an insurance provider into ChatGPT.

Los Angeles-based Altruist said on Tuesday its new planning tool can help advisers create personalised tax strategies “within minutes” for clients by reading their tax returns, payslips, and meeting notes. It could also explore “what-if” scenarios including property sales or retirement transitions.

“It expands what a single adviser can handle, raises the bar on outcomes, and makes average advice a lot harder to justify,” Altruist’s founder and chief executive Jason Wenk said of the company’s Hazel platform.

The broader S&P 500 closed 0.3 per cent lower, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 0.6 per cent, in a choppy session on Tuesday.