Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole speech, higher odds of a September rate hike, and a powerful AI driven rally in stocks like Nvidia and leading cybersecurity names have pushed the cost of money and equity expectations back into the spotlight. This is especially important for fintech and brokerage platforms that touch client cash every day. This article walks through three stocks exposed to this news that could matter for your portfolio watchlist.
The stocks highlighted below are just a starting sample, and the full screen surfaced 20 more U.S. fintech, brokerage, and custody companies with equally compelling client cash stories that are not covered here. To go deeper into this idea, head straight into the Fintech and Brokerage Platforms Monetising Client Cash Balances screener to identify, analyze, and focus on the highest conviction plays for your own watchlist.
Overview: BILL Holdings runs a cloud-based financial operations platform that helps small and midsize businesses manage payments, accounts payable and receivable, and spend and expense management, often sitting between client money flows and the banking system. By handling card, ACH, real-time, and cross-border payments, along with lending and deposit products, BILL is positioned to benefit when higher short term rates lift the value of funds that move across or rest on its platform.
Operations: BILL generates about US$1.7b in revenue from software and programming services, with roughly US$1.6b coming from the United States and a small contribution from markets outside the U.S.
Investors watching how fintechs respond to higher short term rates may want to keep an eye on BILL Holdings. The company’s AI enabled platform helps SMBs digitise core financial workflows, which can support sticky transaction volumes and give BILL opportunities to monetise payment flows and related cash balances. Management has highlighted profitable growth and margin expansion, supported by high gross margins and float revenue that has been meaningful enough for them to report results excluding its impact. At the same time, BILL is still working through the shift from losses to sustained profitability and relies on external funding rather than customer deposits, which can make earnings more sensitive to rate cycles and execution missteps.
BILL Holdings’ shift from losses to profitability and its float driven income story can look powerful on the surface. The real question is how those cash flows stack up in the DCF valuation analysis for BILL Holdings that could reveal where expectations quietly break.
Overview: Webull is a digital investment platform and online brokerage that lets retail investors trade stocks, options, ETFs and other assets while holding idle cash inside brokerage accounts that can be swept into interest earning products. The company also offers market data, research tools, a user community and investor education across multiple countries, positioning Webull as a full service trading and cash hub on your phone.
Operations: Webull currently generates all of its US$674 million in revenue from its brokerage business.
For investors focused on how higher short term rates filter through to brokerage earnings, Webull is hard to ignore. The platform operates on active retail trading and growing client assets, and recent earnings commentary highlights meaningful trading and interest related revenue tied to margin loans and client cash balances. Fed rate expectations have moved higher again, which keeps the spotlight on how much Webull can earn from idle cash and sweep programs. The company is also leaning into AI tools and subscription services, which could deepen engagement and support monetisation per user. On the other hand, the company has a rich valuation, relies on external funding rather than customer deposits, and remains sensitive to shifts in retail trading appetite, so the upside story comes with real execution and funding risks attached.
Webull’s rich valuation and rising rate exposure could be masking a very different earnings story. Before the next move in client cash and trading activity, review the 3 key rewards and 2 important warning signs that may challenge the usual bull case.
Overview: DLocal is a Uruguay based payment processor that helps global merchants accept and send money across emerging markets using local cards, bank transfers, cash payments, and hundreds of alternative payment methods. Because it handles large volumes of cross border and local transactions, DLocal can sit on settlement and float balances where higher short term rates may modestly support interest income, which ties it into this client cash focused screener.
Operations: DLocal generates about US$1.4b in revenue from payment processing, with exposure across Latin America including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, other regional markets, and segment adjustments.
Investors looking at DLocal are really looking at a way to plug into the digitalisation of payments across emerging markets through a company that already processes billions of dollars in quarterly transaction volume and works closely with large global merchants. The business is highly cash generative, with management pointing to free cash flow conversion and operating leverage helped by use of AI to speed up software deployment and keep headcount growth in check. At the same time, you need to be comfortable with risks around concentration in a handful of big clients, regulatory and FX swings in markets such as Brazil and Argentina, and a valuation that reflects high growth expectations in a rising rate environment where funding costs matter.
DLocal’s cross border growth story and strong cash generation could be only half the picture. To see how expectations, free cash flow and emerging market risks all fit together, walk through the full narrative for DLocal
Seeking Fresh Alternatives Before Others?
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data
and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your
financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data.
Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
Valuation is complex, but we’re here to simplify it.
Discover if Webull might be undervalued or overvalued with our detailed analysis, featuring fair value estimates, potential risks, dividends, insider trades, and its financial condition.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly.Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com
MI
mitchell_lawler
The Foxhole
A landmark settlement is meant to punish Meta (META). If the 1998 tobacco deal is any guide, it might protect it.
Any moat with an opt-out clause for your competitors is just a fence around your own garden.
Worth looking at what previous legal action actually did to Meta rather than reaching for tobacco. The FTC’s record five billion dollar privacy fine in 2019 was met with the stock rising, because it came in below fears and removed an open question. GDPR was designed to constrain large platforms and increased their share of the European ad market, because compliance cost fell hardest on small intermediaries. The FTC’s antitrust case, the one that could genuinely have broken the company up, was decided in Meta’s favour last November. The only thing that ever meaningfully hurt the business was Apple changing a tracking default, and Meta out-spent that too, while the ad-tech firms that could not afford to rebuild disappeared. The pattern is not that Meta survives regulation. It is that regulation keeps costing its smaller competitors more.
Great earnings season, but are the earnings real?
At first glance, this was the strongest earnings season in years. But when you look at where the growth actually came from, the story splits into two very different pictures.
10
Aug 28, 2026
About NasdaqCM:BULL
Webull
Operates as a digital investment platform.
High growth potential with adequate balance sheet.
Market Insights
Great earnings season, but are the earnings real?AN
Andrew Legget
Which payment stocks actually get paid?MI
Mitchell Lawler
Picking portfolio winners takes more than hot airAN
Andrew Legget
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