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Bullish Calls from CICC and China Merchants Securities Clash with Founder Securities' Bearish View: Are Brokerage Q3 Earnings a Blind Box?
As the earnings preview window opens once again, sell-side research institutes have delivered their respective scenario projections. Looking back at the volatile A-share market in the third quarter of 2026, the science and technology innovation sector saw a sharp correction, compounded by a wave of heavyweight IPOs landing in concentrated fashion, pushing earnings forecasts for listed brokerages into stark polarization. Where exactly does the disagreement lie?
Six Reports, Six Scripts
It is once again time for sell-side analysts to collectively open a blind box. When it comes to forecasting third-quarter 2026 earnings for listed brokerages, research institutions have produced answers that differ rather dramatically: for single-quarter net profit year-on-year growth in Q3, the optimists see +15.5%, while the pessimists give -9%, a spread of 24.5 percentage points between the two extremes. According to industry convention, quarterly brokerage previews in prior years typically featured disagreements within 10 percentage points, so this year the debate has reached a new level of intensity.
CICC and China Merchants Securities stand on the optimistic side: the co-investment paper gains from heavyweight IPOs like Changxin represent a one-time bonus delivered to brokerages in the third quarter, sufficient to offset drawdowns in equity holdings, with proprietary trading remaining the main growth engine, sustaining double-digit year-on-year positive growth on a single-quarter basis in Q3.
Shenwan Hongyuan and Guotai Haitong occupy the middle ground, but the meaning of middle differs between the two: Shenwan Hongyuan offers a mild forecast, believing industry growth should be pushed downward. Guotai Haitong, meanwhile, does not provide a specific Q3 single-quarter figure, with its non-bank commentary focusing on head concentration, continued strict regulation and internationalization business, maintaining a cautious stance on the aggregate. What the two share in common is this: the bonus is an exclusive benefit for a select few, not something the entire industry enjoys equally. The science and technology innovation sector fell hard, most brokerages' equity proprietary trading could not withstand the pressure, and what fixed income earned could only serve as a buffer, making it very difficult to fully erase losses.
Founder Securities may be the sole bear in the room: it directly predicts a year-on-year negative turn for Q3 on a single-quarter basis. In the analyst's assumptions, the damage from the science and technology innovation decline outweighs all one-time gains, with commission and margin financing rates declining further, adding layer upon layer of pressure. Kaiyuan Securities does not provide an industry aggregate forecast, but places its focus on head alpha and valuation recovery: rather than betting on industry beta, it is better to crouch down for structural opportunities in head individual stocks.
Business Lines, Resilience Varies by Account
The root of the disagreement comes down to one sentence: should co-investment paper gains be counted as an industry dividend or as an individual stock easter egg? The biggest variable may be whether the co-investment bonus can serve as a backstop. The optimists factor this one-time gain into their industry-wide calculations; the cautious camp strips it out entirely, looking at brokerages' fundamental capabilities without relying on a windfall from the sky. This is also the starting point of all contradictions.
Beyond proprietary trading as the main battlefield, brokerage and investment banking each have their own calculations. Everyone acknowledges that IPOs are hot, with hard science and technology projects clustering together. However, some institutions believe underwriting can bring substantial profits, while other brokerages remind that underwriting fee rates for science and technology innovation projects are currently compressed very low, and buzz does not equal profitability. Declining trading volume on a quarter-on-quarter basis and weakening margin financing are also consensus views, but the degree of pain each firm estimates from commission declines varies completely.
Additionally, there is an easily overlooked pitfall: statistical scope. A relatively larger set of statistics includes 42 listed brokerages, while some brokerages include Guosheng Securities for a total of 43. Some brokerages manually exclude large non-recurring gains and losses from the same period last year to adjust the base, while others directly use original report figures as the base. The same set of market conditions, with a different scope, produces instantly different growth rates. This is also a common misconception many people fall into when reading research reports: looking only at the growth rate number without examining the underlying assumption package.
The Answer Awaits Once Earnings Land
Heated debate aside, there is one consensus no one opposes: divergence is a foregone conclusion. Heads with quality co-investment projects in hand, high fixed-income positions and thick investment banking pipelines are clearly faring better than small and mid-sized brokerages; many smaller brokerages are heavily positioned in growth sectors and have been hurt more deeply in this round of correction. Market conditions give bonuses, but they also set traps; one-time gains cannot sustain long-term performance.
The essence of sell-side previews is not a standard answer, but a scenario sandbox for each institution's assumptions. Whether the bonus can cover paper losses, and what secrets the proprietary trading position structure holds, will be revealed when third-quarter reports are disclosed one after another. We will then look back and review who bet on the right script today and whose assumptions were disproven by the market. So, which side do you stand on? In the third quarter of 2026, will it be a comeback driven by co-investment, or will proprietary trading drag performance lower? Feel free to leave your comments.
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