BlackRock Earnings: Investors Kept Buying Bonds as They Fell
Investors kept putting money into bonds in the third quarter of 2026 even as bonds lost value. Of the $205.5 billion of new money that clients handed to BlackRock, the manager of $15.5 trillion, $78.2 billion went into bond funds, more than the $52.4 billion that went into stock funds, while price moves cut $117.4 billion from the value of the bonds BlackRock already managed. Over the first nine months of 2026, our count from BlackRock’s own quarterly tables shows bonds drawing slightly more new money than stocks ($204.6 billion against $195.9 billion), while rising stock prices added $1.03 trillion to the stock side and bond prices took $104.9 billion away from the bond side.
Where new money went at BlackRock in Q3 2026
On this page
- Bonds took the biggest share of new money
- Bond buyers kept coming as bond prices fell
- Stock prices did the growing, bonds narrowly led new money
- Cash funds and crypto funds drew money again
- Private markets are small in money and large in fees
- BlackRock’s own results for the quarter
- Signals that would show the pattern turning
- How we counted
- Frequently asked questions
Bonds took the biggest share of new money
The largest single slice of the new money BlackRock took in during the July to September quarter went to bond funds, $78.2 billion out of $205.5 billion, which works out to about 38 cents of every new dollar. Stock funds came second with $52.4 billion, and money market and other cash funds third with $30.7 billion, according to the product table in BlackRock’s third quarter 2026 earnings release.
In this article "new money" means what the release calls net flows: money clients put into BlackRock’s funds and accounts minus money they took out, which leaves out any change in the price of what was already held, and which BlackRock reports apart from the cash its private market funds hand back as investments mature. These are the choices of one manager’s clients, so they show where BlackRock’s customers put money, and the release says nothing about where that money came from or what other managers saw.
Show the data
| From | To | Value |
|---|---|---|
| All new money | Long-term funds | $174.8B |
| All new money | Cash funds | $30.7B |
| Long-term funds | Bond funds | $78.2B |
| Long-term funds | Stock funds | $52.4B |
| Long-term funds | Private and hedge | $24.2B |
| Long-term funds | Crypto and other | $19.9B |
Most of the bond money arrived through exchange-traded funds, the funds that trade on a stock exchange like a share (our guide to ETFs explains how they work). Bond ETFs took $66.1 billion of the $78.2 billion, and BlackRock’s ETFs as a whole took $134.5 billion, about two thirds of everything that came in. The money came mostly from the Americas, which supplied $125 billion of the $175 billion that went into long-term funds (everything except cash funds), with $31 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and $19 billion from Asia-Pacific.
Not every pocket grew. Institutional clients, a group that includes pension plans, pulled $27.4 billion out of BlackRock’s index accounts, money that tracks a market index, a withdrawal the release shows without naming its cause. Those withdrawals are already netted inside the asset class figures above. The remaining long-term money split into private markets ($15.3 billion), hedge funds, which BlackRock calls liquid alternatives ($8.9 billion), bitcoin and ether funds ($7.9 billion), commodity funds and currency products ($7.0 billion) and funds that mix stocks and bonds ($5.1 billion).
Bond buyers kept coming as bond prices fell
The bond money is the striking part of the quarter, because it arrived while the bonds themselves were losing value. BlackRock’s release splits the change in every asset class into new money, money returned to clients, market moves and currency effects, and for bonds the market line reads minus $117.4 billion, about 3.5% of the $3.39 trillion of bond assets it held on June 30. Clients put in $78.2 billion all the same, so the bond pile ended the quarter at $3.35 trillion, only slightly smaller than it started.
Show the data
| Category | Change |
|---|---|
| Stocks | +$40.1B |
| Bonds | -$117.4B |
| Mixed stock and bond | -$12.6B |
| Private markets | -$2.9B |
| Hedge funds | +$1.0B |
| Bitcoin and ether funds | +$22.9B |
| Commodities and currency | +$6.6B |
| Cash funds | +$2.2B |
Bond prices fall when interest rates rise, since an older bond paying less than new ones has to get cheaper to compete. The quarter ended two weeks after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate by a quarter of a percentage point to a range of 3.75% to 4% on September 16, a 12 to 0 decision (our report on the September hike covers the meeting).
The bond loss is a figure for the whole quarter and the hike came in its last two weeks, so the timing fits only in part, and higher rates also mean newly bought bonds pay more income, which is one reason a buyer might keep adding. BlackRock’s release gives no reason for the inflows, though, so the link between the hike, the losses and the buying is our reading of the timing and nothing the company states.
Stocks had the opposite quarter. Their market line was plus $40.1 billion, a small gain on $8.9 trillion of stock assets, and the bitcoin and ether funds gained $22.9 billion from prices, far more than the $7.9 billion clients added to them. Funds mixing stocks and bonds lost $12.6 billion to prices, and the release does not split that line between their stock and bond holdings.
What the market line measures. BlackRock’s "market change" is the gain or loss in value of the assets it manages from price moves during the quarter, before currency effects. It is a dollar change in BlackRock’s holdings, not the return of any single fund.
Stock prices did the growing, bonds narrowly led new money
Bonds outdrew stocks for new money in two quarters running, and across 2026 so far as well. In the second quarter, bond funds took $92.1 billion against $71.6 billion for stock funds (second quarter release), and in the third $78.2 billion against $52.4 billion. The first quarter went the other way, $71.8 billion into stocks and $34.3 billion into bonds (first quarter release), and the nine months add up to $204.6 billion for bonds and $195.9 billion for stocks.
Show the data
| Period | Stock funds | Bond funds | Cash funds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | $19.3B | $37.7B | $0.8B |
| Q2 2025 | $28.8B | -$4.7B | $21.9B |
| Q3 2025 | $46.0B | $47.6B | $34.1B |
| Q4 2025 | $126.1B | $83.8B | $73.9B |
| Q1 2026 | $71.8B | $34.3B | -$6.2B |
| Q2 2026 | $71.6B | $92.1B | -$7.4B |
| Q3 2026 | $52.4B | $78.2B | $30.7B |
The growth in value tells the opposite story. BlackRock’s stock assets rose from $7.79 trillion at the end of 2025 to $8.98 trillion at the end of September, and $1.03 trillion of that rise came from higher prices, more than five times the new money clients added to stocks. Bond assets went from $3.27 trillion to $3.35 trillion, a small rise that new money paid for, since bond prices took $104.9 billion away over the nine months. So in 2026 rising stock prices did most of the growing in the money BlackRock manages, while clients added to both and put a little more of their fresh cash into bonds.
That pattern can be read in more than one way, and the release supports none of them over the others. Investors who watched stocks climb may be locking some of the gain into income, or pension plans may be buying bonds to match what they owe retirees, or some of the bond ETF money may be cash parked for a while in funds holding bonds that mature within months. The seven quarters in the chart also show how much the mix moves: in the last quarter of 2025 stocks took $126.1 billion, half as much again as the $83.8 billion that went into bonds that quarter (fourth quarter 2025 release).
Cash funds and crypto funds drew money again
Money market and other cash funds took in $30.7 billion in the third quarter after two quarters of withdrawals, $6.2 billion in the first and $7.4 billion in the second. Cash funds hold very short-term loans to governments, banks and companies, so what they pay tends to move with the Fed’s rate, and the return of cash buyers came in the same quarter as the hike, though BlackRock gives no reason for this inflow either. Over the first nine months of 2026, cash funds took in a net $17.0 billion, a small number next to $1.10 trillion of cash assets.
The bitcoin and ether funds, which BlackRock groups as digital assets (its 2025 annual report describes that category as bitcoin exchange-traded products listed in the US, Canada, Europe, the UK and Australia, and an ether product listed in the US), drew $7.9 billion of new money after losing $3.1 billion in the second quarter. That was the largest quarterly inflow into the category since the third quarter of 2025, when it took $16.7 billion (third quarter 2025 release).
Show the data
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Q1 2025 | $3.4B |
| Q2 2025 | $14.1B |
| Q3 2025 | $16.7B |
| Q4 2025 | $0.6B |
| Q1 2026 | $0.9B |
| Q2 2026 | -$3.1B |
| Q3 2026 | $7.9B |
Price did most of the work in these funds, though. Their assets rose from $48.8 billion to $79.6 billion in the quarter, and $22.9 billion of that $30.8 billion rise came from higher crypto prices against $7.9 billion from buyers. A year earlier the same funds held $104.0 billion, so even after the quarter’s rebound they hold less than they did in September 2025, after $30.6 billion of price losses over the twelve months that $6.3 billion of new money did not make up. In a portfolio of $15.5 trillion they are about one dollar in every two hundred.
Private markets are small in money and large in fees
Private markets, the funds that invest in things that do not trade on an exchange such as infrastructure, private loans to companies, property and stakes in private firms, hold 2% of BlackRock’s assets and earn 11% of its base fees, the regular management fees plus securities lending revenue. So each dollar there brings in about six times the fees of a dollar in BlackRock’s stock or bond funds, by our calculation below, and the third quarter added $15.3 billion of new money to the category. Infrastructure took the most ($7.6 billion), then private credit, meaning loans made directly to companies outside the bond market ($5.0 billion).
Here private markets means BlackRock’s reporting category, whose assets can include money clients have committed that already earns fees before it is invested, according to the definitions in BlackRock’s earnings supplement, and some private credit sits in its bond and mixed categories instead.
Show the data
| Item | Assets, Sept 30 | Fee revenue, Q3 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stocks | 57% | 51% | -6 pts |
| Bonds | 22% | 18% | -4 pts |
| Mixed stock and bond | 9% | 7% | -2 pts |
| Cash funds | 7% | 6% | -1 pts |
| Private markets | 2% | 11% | +9 pts |
| Hedge funds | 1% | 4% | +3 pts |
We worked out what BlackRock would earn in a year on each $10,000 it managed in each category at the third quarter’s pace, from the quarter’s base fees and average assets in the release. Private markets came to about $80, hedge funds about $77, the bitcoin and ether funds about $25, and stock funds, bond funds and cash funds about $13 to $14 each, with BlackRock as a whole at about $16. These are averages across very different products, from low-cost index funds to pricier actively run ones, so they describe BlackRock’s revenue and not the fee any single investor pays.
Private markets also hand money back as investments mature, which the release counts separately as realizations: $5.4 billion in the quarter, so the category grew by less than its new money. Laurence D. Fink, the chairman and chief executive, said in the release that BlackRock had "raised $68 billion in private markets over the last twelve months, and our AI Infrastructure Partnership made its first deployment this quarter." The release does not name the investment.
BlackRock’s own results for the quarter
BlackRock earned $15.93 a share on its adjusted basis, ahead of the $14.04 that analysts expected in the consensus compiled by Zacks Investment Research, and $10.57 a share under standard accounting (GAAP), up from $8.43 a year earlier. Revenue rose 19% to $7.75 billion. Assets under management came in at $15.49 trillion, below the $15.67 trillion in the same Zacks consensus, in the quarter of the bond losses described above. The full figures are on StockTitan’s page for the release, the BlackRock overview and its financials page.
The largest piece of the gap between the two earnings figures is one line. BlackRock booked a $564 million noncash charge for the change in the value of payments it still owes the sellers of two businesses it bought, the infrastructure investor GIP and the private credit firm HPS Investment Partners, and the release says that amount "is impacted by the share price of BlackRock common stock at the end of the period." The adjusted figures leave it out, along with other deal costs (our explainer on GAAP and adjusted earnings covers why companies report both). On the adjusted basis the operating margin, the share of revenue left after running costs as BlackRock measures it, rose to 47.8% from 44.6%.
Base fee and lending revenue grew about in line with the money BlackRock manages. Our calculation of the blended revenue rate, base fees plus securities lending revenue over average assets, gives about 15.6 cents a year on every $100 managed in both the third quarter of 2026 and the third quarter of 2025, as base fees plus securities lending revenue rose 19.6% and average assets 19.3%.
A blended figure cannot show whether individual fund prices or the product mix changed, since the two can offset each other. Performance fees rose to $630 million from $516 million, which the release ties largely to a single hedge fund whose yearly measurement period ends in the third quarter, and technology services revenue, which includes the Aladdin investment software, rose 14% to $588 million.
No market reaction yet. This article was written before the US market opened on October 14, 2026, and before BlackRock’s 7:30 a.m. ET earnings call, so it states no share price move and quotes nothing from the call.
Signals that would show the pattern turning
The clearest sign would be stock funds taking more new money than bond funds again, as they did in the first quarter of 2026 and the last quarter of 2025, and BlackRock’s fourth quarter release will show whether that happens. Fink said in the release that BlackRock is "entering our seasonally strongest fourth quarter with accelerating momentum," which is the company’s own expectation and not a measured result.
The Fed’s next decision on October 27 and 28 is the next rate event for bond and cash funds, since the September hike fell in the same quarter as the bond losses and the return to cash. A second quarter of cash inflows would suggest the third quarter return to cash was more than a one-off, and another quarter of crypto fund inflows would show the buying continuing. Withdrawals by large institutions from index mandates, minus $27.4 billion this quarter, are worth watching too, because they can swing the total by tens of billions in either direction.
How we counted
Every flow figure comes from the product type and client type tables, the net flow highlights and the asset bridge tables of BlackRock’s quarterly earnings releases, from the first quarter of 2025 to the third quarter of 2026, read on October 14, 2026. Stocks, bonds, cash, private markets, hedge funds (liquid alternatives), digital assets and currency and commodities are BlackRock’s own categories. We summed the three 2026 quarters and checked each sum against the year-to-date table in the third quarter release, and they agree to within $1 million of rounding.
The fee per $10,000 is each category’s base fees plus securities lending revenue for the third quarter, multiplied by four, divided by the category’s average assets for the quarter as the release reports them (an average of four month-end values). The blended rate uses the same method for the whole firm. Both are our calculations and neither is a figure BlackRock publishes. The release does not break out flows by fund or by individual client, so a large single mandate can move a category in any one quarter.
Frequently asked questions
How much new money did BlackRock bring in during the third quarter of 2026?
BlackRock reported $205.5 billion of net inflows for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, made of $174.8 billion into long-term funds and $30.7 billion into cash funds, close to the $204.6 billion of the same quarter a year earlier. Over the twelve months to September it took in $868.6 billion.
Did BlackRock beat earnings expectations in Q3 2026?
Yes on earnings per share. Adjusted earnings were $15.93 a share against the $14.04 consensus compiled by Zacks Investment Research, and revenue of $7.75 billion was above the $7.45 billion in that consensus. Assets under management of $15.49 trillion were below the $15.67 trillion expected.
Are investors moving from stocks to bonds?
At BlackRock, bond funds took more new money than stock funds in the second and third quarters of 2026 and over the nine months as a whole, while stock funds still took $195.9 billion. BlackRock’s clients did not pull money out of stock funds on balance; they added to both and put a little more into bonds.
How much money went into BlackRock’s bitcoin funds in Q3 2026?
BlackRock’s digital assets category, its bitcoin and ether exchange-traded products, took $7.9 billion of net inflows in the third quarter of 2026 after $3.1 billion of outflows in the second. Its assets rose to $79.6 billion, mostly because crypto prices rose.
Where can I follow BlackRock results and releases on StockTitan?
StockTitan’s BlackRock news page carries each release as it comes out, the financials page holds the quarterly figures, and the stock return calculator works out what a past holding of the shares returned over any period you choose.
Sources
- StockTitan: BlackRock Reports Third Quarter 2026 Earnings
- StockTitan: BlackRock overview
- StockTitan: BlackRock financials
- BlackRock, third quarter 2026 earnings release, October 14, 2026
- BlackRock, third quarter 2026 earnings release supplement
- BlackRock, second quarter 2026 earnings release (SEC exhibit 99.1)
- BlackRock, first quarter 2026 earnings release (SEC exhibit 99.1)
- BlackRock, fourth quarter 2025 earnings release (SEC exhibit 99.1)
- BlackRock, third quarter 2025 earnings release (SEC exhibit 99.1)
- BlackRock, second quarter 2025 earnings release
- BlackRock, first quarter 2025 earnings release
- BlackRock, annual report on Form 10-K for 2025
- Federal Reserve, FOMC statement, September 16, 2026
- Federal Reserve, FOMC meeting calendar
The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only. It does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendation, or an endorsement of any particular investment strategy. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.