On a Tuesday in late September 2026, financial stocks retreated as two converging forces reminded markets that the old architecture of banking profitability is under quiet siege. A flattening yield curve — that ancient measure of the distance between borrowing short and lending long — is squeezing the margins on which banks have always depended, while artificial intelligence raises a more existential question about whether the human intermediaries of capital will remain necessary at all. These are not separate storms but a single weather system, and investors are beginning to price the sky acc