Conviction / Labor-Exposure Shorts Watch
LPLA
LPL Financial
conviction
LPL Financial supports independent financial advisors and just posted record profits with its strongest recruiting quarter in nearly two years. It is a solid business, but it has nothing to do with the technology the fund is built around.
What we judge
The view on expected return from here, 0 to 100.
Whether the thesis could succeed without this company at all. This moves slowly, and only when the company's position genuinely changes.
What we measure
Facts from market data, not judgments.
| Price | $360.29 |
| 30-day move | +17.1% |
| Position in 52-week range | 72 |
| From the 52-week high | -10.0% |
| Average daily volume | $334.8M |
Why it is in the fund
Thesis
Independent financial advisor platform threatened as agentic AI delivers personalized wealth management at near-zero marginal cost.
Standing judgment
LPL is a broker dealer custody and advisory platform; nothing about agentic AI reaching production depends on it, and the thesis succeeds identically whether or not it exists. The business is compounding hard, with record adjusted EPS of $5.84 beating by 8.6%, $2.6 trillion in client assets across roughly 32,500 advisors, and a record recruiting pipeline that delivered $25B of recruited assets. It is also the opposite of labor-disrupted: it just shipped its own advisor-facing AI agent, Cyan, on the new LPL Latitude platform.
What changed, and why
Every move in this number carries the reason it moved. A score does not change without new evidence.
| Date | Conviction | Change | Cause | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-05 | 48 | flat | first v3 judgment (v2 score was uninformative, see L-001): A genuinely strong compounding business with no thesis linkage, priced near fair after a 31% five-year EPS growth run, which produces a respectable but unexceptional forward expected return. | Q2 2026 adjusted EPS $5.84, a company record, beating estimates by 8.55%; TTM adjusted EPS $21.87, a 31% CAGR since 2021; ~32,500 advisors and $2.6T client assets; advisory assets +46% to $1.55T (60.4% of total); recruited assets $25B, best quarter in nearly two years ex-institutional; organic net n |
| 2026-08-05 | 48 | +32 | first v3 judgment (v2 score was uninformative, see L-001): A genuinely strong compounding business with no thesis linkage, priced near fair after a 31% five-year EPS growth run, which produces a respectable but unexceptional forward expected return. | Q2 2026 adjusted EPS $5.84, a company record, beating estimates by 8.55%; TTM adjusted EPS $21.87, a 31% CAGR since 2021; ~32,500 advisors and $2.6T client assets; advisory assets +46% to $1.55T (60.4% of total); recruited assets $25B, best quarter in nearly two years ex-institutional; organic net n |
| 2026-07-31 | 16 | -33 | ⚠️ v2 rank-normalization artifact, unexplained move | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-30 | 49 | +39 | ⚠️ v2 rank-normalization artifact, unexplained move | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-29 | 10 | -6 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-28 | 16 | +3 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-27 | 13 | -45 | ⚠️ v2 rank-normalization artifact, unexplained move | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-26 | 58 | +12 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-25 | 46 | +8 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-24 | 38 | +23 | ⚠️ v2 rank-normalization artifact, unexplained move | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-23 | 15 | -34 | ⚠️ v2 rank-normalization artifact, unexplained move | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-22 | 49 | +14 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-21 | 35 | +9 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |
| 2026-07-20 | 26 | -3 | migrated from v2 (cause not recorded) | v2 `scores` row |