Sector Update: Financial Stocks Higher Pre-Bell

09:29 AM EDT, 10/12/2026 (MT Newswires) -- Financial stocks were higher pre-bell Monday, with the State Street Financial Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLF) advancing by 0.2%. The Direxion Daily Financial Bull 3X Shares (FAS) gained 0.5%, and its bearish counterpart Direxion Daily Financial Bear 3X Shares (FAZ) was 0.7% lower. IREN (IREN) shares were up 4% following a report by The Information revealing that Anthropic is the unnamed "frontier AI lab" in its major cloud services contract that co-CEO Daniel Roberts referenced in IREN's fiscal Q4 earnings call in August. Blackstone (BX) stock was 0.3% higher following a 1.4% gain in the prior session. Bloomberg reported the company is spearheading a $1 billion private debt package tied to a proposed business combination involving the security enterprise solution units of Leidos (LDOS) and Analogic. Citigroup (C) advanced 0.2% in premarket activity. Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter, that the company is seeking to accelerate efforts to meet long-standing regulatory requirements so it can refocus on growth.