Financials lost $168 billion on the day Meta's Muse landed. The S&P 500 finished flat.

S&P 500 financials lost $168.0 billion in market value on Tuesday, 22 September, while the index as a whole finished essentially flat, with a market-cap-weighted change of +0.01%. Technology added $144.1 billion over the same session. On the treemap, technology is mostly green and financials are nearly all red: 69 of the sector's 75 companies closed lower.

That was the day several headlines tied the sector's slide to Meta's new AI agent, Muse. The Wall Street Journal ran "Meta's Muse Comes for Financial Stocks". Bloomberg reported that Muse was dragging down stocks that depend on "consumer inertia", and Barron's said bank stocks fell as Muse added fuel to AI fears. Reuters named a second factor alongside AI: a flattening yield curve. The site's data can show where the $168 billion actually went, and how unusual the day was.

The sector fell 1.93% while the index barely moved

Weighted by market cap, financials fell 1.93%. That is the sector's weakest day in the site's S&P 500 snapshots, which begin in mid-June. The previous low was a 1.89% drop on 9 July. On Tuesday the sector finished 1.94 percentage points behind the index.

Financials make up about $8.4 trillion of the index's roughly $71.0 trillion, or around 12%. The sector's $168.0 billion loss was larger than the gains of the five other rising sectors combined, which came to $96.6 billion.

Where the $168 billion came from

The biggest single contributor was the biggest bank. $JPM fell 3.42% and lost $32.0 billion, about a fifth of the sector's total. The site's daily price history shows that was JPMorgan's worst day since 29 July. It came on the same day the bank announced a $20 billion partnership with the Qatar Investment Authority.

All five of the largest dollar losses were household names:

Together they account for $80.8 billion, just under half of the sector's loss. $WFC (−3.92%, −$10.3B) and $MS (−2.88%, −$9.3B) were close behind.

Schwab and Allstate fell further than the big banks

Ranked by percentage, the list looks different. The steepest declines came from companies that manage customers' money or sell them policies:

• $SCHW fell 6.11%, its worst day since 16 April.
• $ALL fell 5.50%, its worst day since 4 April 2025. Other headlines that day pointed to new catastrophe losses at Allstate, so Muse was not the only story attached to its fall.
• $AMP fell 4.36%, $RJF 3.51% and $NTRS 3.10%.
• Among other insurers, $PGR fell 2.50% and $TRV 2.46%.

These are the businesses the "consumer inertia" headlines described: their customers rarely move a brokerage account or switch car insurer. Tuesday's prices do not show whether an AI agent will change that. They do show that the two steepest drops in the sector, Schwab and Allstate, were both larger than any of the big banks' declines.

The six financials that rose were a mixed group: $AIG (+0.86%), $HOOD (+0.77%), $EG (+0.48%), $MCO (+0.43%), $BRK-B (+0.29%) and $COIN (+0.01%). At $1.08 trillion, $BRK-B is the largest company in the sector, and its small gain partly offset the sector's decline.

PayPal, Meta's new partner, barely moved

Several of the day's headlines described $PYPL as surging after it announced it would handle checkout inside Muse. PayPal closed up only 0.51%, at $52.89, so any larger gain during the session was mostly gone by the close. $META itself fell 0.63%.

Muse also came up in headlines about Intuit, and $INTU fell 3.87%. One report grouped travel stocks with financials and insurers. $RCL fell 6.14%, the third-largest percentage decline in the S&P 500 that day.

Elsewhere on the map, chips rose

The rest of the session was not a broad selloff. The Nasdaq 100 came close to a record, and chipmakers drove technology's gain. $MU rose 5.00% and added $59.0 billion, more than any other stock in the index and well ahead of $NVDA's $36.0 billion. Financials' losses were concentrated in one sector, while gains were spread across most of the others.

This post describes market data and reported headlines. It is not investment advice.