Goldman Sachs’ New $2B Revenue Stream & Chili’s Banks on Chicken

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Timing the market, fighting inflation, managing risk? Financial decisions can be tricky. Investing isn't just math, it's psychology. Your neurons are playing favorites and the market doesn't care. Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, can help.
Join host Mark Reapy as he breaks down practical strategies to help overcome the mental traps that may affect your investing decisions.
Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder.

**Ann Berry** (0:31)
Carver, Chillies, On Holdings, it is still earning season and we've got quite a round up.
NVIDIA, Meta both released open weight AI models this week. Are they sending a message? And if so, to whom? And Goldman Sachs, the banking OG, just spent more than $2 billion on an ETF business. What is driving the move and why is it happening now? We break it all down. For Wednesday, August 12th, it's Brew Markets Daily, and I'm Ann Berry.
More market details to come, but first, ETFs. Now with more of them in existence than there are individual stocks. And getting ever more attention from some financial institutions that have historically stayed away. I'll get to why in just a moment. Well Goldman Sachs today announced it will pay as much as $2.25 billion to buy Nios investments. The cash and equity deal adds a fast growing ETF issuer to the banking giant's suite of actively managed exchange traded funds. Well the deal brings to Goldman $30 billion of assets under supervision. That's across Nios' 19 options based income ETFs, bumping the banking giant's number 8 amongst active ETF issuers.
This deal, by the way, builds on Goldman's announcement back in April that the firm had closed the acquisition of Innovator Capital Management, a leader in defined outcome ETFs, which are funds that use options to limit potential stock market losses in exchange for a limit on the gains over a set period of time. Well, by integrating Innovator's then roughly $31 billion in assets under supervision across a suite of more than 170 ETFs, Goldman Sachs' asset management division jumped to become a top 10 global active ETF provider.
Well, Goldman's Buying Spree is a move to capture surging investor demand for actively managed and income generating strategies. It's a lot of syllables. But the idea is that the bank is securing steady, fee-based asset management revenue in the process of doing these deals. Which is why this caught our eye. All the major Wall Street banks are leaning into asset and wealth management to generate predictable recurring fees. That's been true of their growth strategies for a while. And that's because these offset the cyclical, more volatile nature of traditional investment banking and trading divisions. But the timing, this race to land major asset management deals, is perhaps getting more pressing. Now, this is just one person's view. This is my own opinion. I believe that it's because 2026 has been a bump a year, exactly for those lumpier bank revenue streams. Global mergers and acquisitions are on track for a record breaking $4 trillion year, with IPO's also at historic highs. Meaning, so are those bumper banking fees. Now, if this is all getting peaky, then banks like Goldman Sachs are wise to hoover up these asset management assets while they can, ready and waiting for when the markets and these deal making fees crack. And at some point, inevitably, they will. Which is why we're going to keep on watching.
Well, coming up in a moment, a spin through the headlines that are moving the markets today, including out of CAVA, Chile's parent company and On Holding. But first, this episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Timing the market, fighting inflation, balancing risk. No one says financial decisions are easy. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Financial decisions can be really tricky, and it's often your own thinking that can lead you astray.
Financial Decoder, an original podcast from Charles Schwab can help.

**Emily Millian** (4:06)
Join host, Mark Reapy, head of the Schwab Center for Financial Research, as he offers modern strategies to help combat the wait what in your head. Mental traps like overconfidence, loss aversion, and recency bias may cloud your investing decisions. When you understand these patterns, you can take steps to make better informed financial decisions.

**Ann Berry** (4:24)
Listen at schwab.com/financialdecoder or wherever you get your podcasts. That's schwab.com/financialdecoder. Well, let's take a quick spin through some of the headlines that are moving the market today, which is a very special day because in the house, we have our executive producer, Emily Millian.

**Emily Millian** (4:43)
Ann, I'm so happy to be with you in studio and not in the control room.

**Ann Berry** (4:47)
Looking good in your headphones, by the way.