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Regional banks fall 4.5% behind the S&P in a week the index went nowhere

Friday, September 18, 2026 · as emailed at the close · the live view is always on the dashboard

Market snapshot

S&P 5007,646.04+0.1%
VIX14.8-4%
10-year5.01%+7bp
Breadth28%above 50-day · 55% a month ago

In brief

The story

The move. The Regional Banks basket lost 4.5% against the S&P this week, a -1.5 sigma reading at the 4th percentile of the trailing year and the third session of the slide. It was a basket-wide move rather than a single name: Regions Financial, M&T Bank and Citizens Financial each fell about 5%, and together they account for only 38% of the drop across the nine names.

The other laggard. Nuclear Renaissance gave up 5.2% against the index on the week, 10th percentile. Constellation Energy fell 11%, worth 2.6 points of the basket move on its own; Vistra lost 5% and Public Service Enterprise 4%. Over 20 sessions the housing chain is still 8.9% behind the S&P, with Builders FirstSource down 17%. On the other side, Cybersecurity is 6.2% ahead over 20 sessions, almost all of it CrowdStrike, up 25%, and Fortinet, up 13%; Memory & Storage added 4.2% on the week, led by Sandisk at +10%.

The market. The S&P 500 closed at 7,646.04, up 0.11% on the day and down 0.1% on the week; over 20 sessions it is up 0.3%. The 10-year yield rose 7bp to 5.01%, and the Wall Street Journal reported futures rising as oil extended losses and Treasury yields climbed. VIX fell 4.1% to 14.81, and 20-day realized vol sits at 9.3%, the 18th percentile of the past year. Beneath a flat index, 28% of members are above their 50-day average, down from 55% a month ago, a 20-session change at the 14th percentile since 2020.

Who did it · 38% of the move in these names

NameWeight5dContrib
RF Regions Financial Corporatio11.1%-5%-0.59pp
MTB M&T Bank11.1%-5%-0.57pp
CFG Citizens Financial Group11.1%-5%-0.53pp

By sector: Financial Services cost 4.5pp.

The board · factors vs S&P 500, relative return with z vs the trailing year, sorted by the week

Factor1D5D20DYTD
S&P 500 (computed) absolute+0.1% +0.1σ-0.1% -0.2σ+0.3% -0.3σ+12.3%
Quality+0.2% +0.5σ+0.5% +0.6σ+0.1% -0.1σ+4.2%
Momentum+0.8% +0.8σ+0.9% +0.4σ+1.6% +0.1σ+17.7%
High beta+0.9% +0.7σ+0.5% +0.1σ+2.5% +0.2σ+16.5%
Low volatility-0.6% -0.5σ-1.3% -0.5σ-2.9% -0.5σ-7.1%
Size-1.1% -1.3σ-1.0% -0.5σ-5.1% -1.5σ-1.1%
Dividend yield-1.0% -1.0σ-2.1% -1.0σ-4.3% -1.2σ+2.7%
Value-0.8% -1.0σ-2.3% -1.4σ-1.6% -0.7σ+3.8%

Also

Breadth, leadership, revisions, realized vol and the baskets, every day: the dashboard. Explore correlations →. Headlines are quoted from their publishers for context.

The narrative in this brief is drafted by an AI model from Factor Watch's computed data and checked against it, but it can still be wrong — verify anything before you act on it.

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