$IBKR —
July: OCC preliminary approval for a trust bank charter ("operational by year-end"), $10.3B in excess capital, and a China account-transfer tailwind.
Current reality: None of it returns. Not in prepared remarks, not in one analyst question. The $0.60 dividend increase stands in as the capital headline with no stated link to the excess-capital math.
The offsets:
→ Autonomous AI trading launched exactly as described in July (human-in-the-loop to guardrails to initial ~3,000-client rollout)
→ Pre-tax margin hit a record 78% (8th straight quarter above 70%)
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