These capital markets names on Josh Brown's list have been big winners. Where they're going next

The article highlights Cboe Global Markets, Interactive Brokers, and Goldman Sachs as standout financial stocks despite the sector being down 5% year to date. Cboe reported Q1 revenue up 29% and EPS up 48% year over year, while IBKR posted commission revenue up 19% to $613 million with client accounts up 31% to 4.75 million and daily trades up 24%. Goldman is up 71% over the past year but is facing slower momentum near the $950-$960 resistance zone, making it the least favored of the three from a technical standpoint.

Analysis

The cleanest read-through is that market activity itself has become a monetizable macro factor. In a tape where dispersion, hedging demand, and event risk are elevated, the exchanges and brokers are effectively long volatility without needing directionally perfect equity exposure; that makes their earnings more resilient than the broader financial complex. The second-order winner is not just CBOE/IBKR, but any adjacent market-infrastructure name with fixed-cost leverage and option/derivatives exposure, while traditional lenders remain stuck with flatter fee growth and more rate-sensitive credit risk.

The more interesting issue is that this trade can persist even if the index chops sideways, because volume can stay high while breadth deteriorates. That creates a subtle divergence: the “best” financials are benefiting from uncertainty rather than economic strength, so they can keep outperforming even as banks and asset managers lag. If IPO activity reopens, the upside isn’t just incremental fees; it could validate a broader risk-on regime and pull capital-markets multiples higher, especially for names with multiple monetization streams like IBKR and GS.

The main risk is mean reversion in activity metrics. A quick drop in realized volatility, lower cross-asset dispersion, or a stall in retail/speculative participation would hit this trade in weeks, not years, because consensus has already started to capitalize the durability of the trading boom. Goldman is the least attractive because it needs multiple engines to cooperate, so any disappointment in issuance or M&A would expose the weaker momentum setup and compress the rerating premium faster than for the pure infrastructure names.

Contrarianly, the market may still be underestimating how sticky trading demand has become: more systematic flows, more options usage, and more hedging around concentrated tech exposure all argue for structurally higher volumes than pre-2020 norms. That favors owning the fee-takers on dips rather than chasing cyclical lenders or hoping for a clean rates-led bank rally.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Long CBOE on pullbacks to the 50-day; target 3-6 month hold with a risk/reward profile that favors another 10-15% upside if volumes stay elevated, but cut if weekly closes lose the trend support.
• Maintain / add to IBKR as the cleaner compounder versus GS; use any broad market selloff to add, since the stock benefits from both trading activity and cash balances, giving it better downside cushioning than pure exchanges.
• Avoid chasing GS here; for a 1-3 month horizon it is a lower-quality long than CBOE/IBKR because it needs issuance and risk appetite to improve simultaneously. Consider a relative-value long CBOE / short GS pair if capital-markets activity stays noisy but not euphoric.
• If listed-options volume or VIX mean-reverts for two consecutive months, trim 25-50% of exposure to CBOE/IBKR, since the earnings multiple support would likely compress quickly.
• For more aggressive positioning, buy 3-6 month call spreads in CBOE or IBKR on dips rather than outright calls; the implied thesis is continued volume strength, but the structure limits damage if activity normalizes.