LPL Financial Q1 2026 13F: $377B in Client ETFs, QQQ Added

LPL Financial LLC filed its first-quarter 2026 13F-HR earlier this month. The reported value: $376.6 billion across the full filing, with our top-500 cut alone summing to $309.6B. That makes LPL the largest broker-dealer 13F filer in the platform-custody bucket — a category that includes Schwab, Pershing, and other clearing firms whose 13F books primarily reflect aggregated client positions rather than house investment decisions. The shape of the filing matters because of that distinction: the top of LPL's book is overwhelmingly index ETFs, and the meaningful Q1 change is what was added rather than what was sold.

The clearest move in 2026Q1 is the introduction of QQQ as a fresh top-three position at $6.13B (1.98% of the reported book). It sits behind only IVV ($7.57B / 2.44%) and SPY ($6.62B / 2.14%). Underneath that, the file shows what looks like coordinated client demand for international and growth-tilted index exposure — IVV share count up 11% QoQ, SPYM up 14%, IEFA (the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF) up 13%. VOO is the only top-ten ETF where share count moved down (-6%) — likely substitution into the freshly-added QQQ rather than directional trimming.

What the LPL filing actually represents

LPL Financial is a registered broker-dealer and RIA custodian — its 13F file aggregates equity positions held in customer brokerage accounts, including assets that LPL's 22,000+ affiliated advisors manage for retail clients. The platform reported $376.6 billion in 13F-eligible US equity value across roughly 8,500 distinct positions in 2026Q1; our top-500 cut covers $309.6B (82%) of that total. The file is one of the cleanest reads on US retail and mass-affluent ETF demand in the institutional 13F universe.

Top of the book in 2026Q1

The top ten positions, ranked by reported value:

• IVV (iShares Core S&P 500 ETF) — $7.57B (2.44%) — +11% shares
• SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust) — $6.62B (2.14%) — Held roughly flat
• QQQ (Invesco QQQ Trust) — $6.13B (1.98%) — NEW position
• AAPL (Apple Inc) — $6.03B (1.95%) — Held roughly flat
• NVDA (NVIDIA Corp) — $5.85B (1.89%) — Held roughly flat
• SPYM (SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF) — $4.49B (1.45%) — +14% shares
• IEFA (iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF) — $4.17B (1.35%) — +13% shares
• SPYG (SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Growth ETF) — $3.90B (1.26%) — Held roughly flat
• MSFT (Microsoft Corp) — $3.83B (1.24%) — Held roughly flat
• VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) — $3.83B (1.24%) — -6% shares

Eight of the top ten lines are passive index ETFs. Two are individual stocks (AAPL, MSFT) — the only two that show up consistently in retail brokerage taxable accounts at high enough holding weights to clear into LPL's aggregated top-ten. The takeaway is that LPL's 13F is best read as a proxy for retail-and-RIA-channel ETF demand, not a high-conviction active book.

Concentration math: a broad book by design

The top ten names hold about $52.4 billion — roughly 16.9% of the $309.6B top-500 cut, far below the S&P 500 cap-weighted top-ten weighting near 36%. That is the signature of an RIA/broker-dealer platform: client positions get aggregated across thousands of individual accounts running everything from balanced-fund-of-funds to single-stock-tilt portfolios, which mechanically dampens any single-name concentration even when the underlying clients are momentum-buying NVDA. LPL's top ten is broader and shallower than any active manager of comparable size.

The AUM trajectory

The 2026Q1 $376.6B AUM print sits inside a steady-growth trajectory. The top-500 sum of $309.6B (Q1 2026) is up 0.9% QoQ from $306.7B at the end of 2025Q4 — a modest gain consistent with mild market drift plus net client inflows into ETF wrappers. LPL's public earnings releases attribute their AUM growth primarily to net new advisor recruiting and client asset transfers; the 13F file rolls all of that into a single equity-only number that lags the holistic asset gathering picture but tracks it directionally.

How LPL compares to other platform custodians

LPL's 13F shape is close to but distinct from other platform custodians in the data set. Wells Fargo, also a custody-heavy filer, runs a more institutional-skewed book with bigger active-stock concentrations (per its 2026Q1 research piece). JPMorgan Chase's 13F includes both custodial client assets and the firm's own discretionary positions across multiple asset management subsidiaries, making the index ETF concentration ratio different. LPL is the cleanest pure-platform read in the institutional 13F universe — closer to Schwab's aggregated client view than to any manager-discretion book.

What to watch from here

• Q2 2026 13F-HR (deadline August 14, 2026) — whether the QQQ initiation in Q1 expands further toward IVV/SPY-level weighting, signalling sustained retail growth-ETF demand into the late spring.
• Net new advisor recruits — any major LPL recruit announcement (typically disclosed at quarterly earnings) directly translates into 13F share count growth in subsequent quarters as transferred client positions come on-platform.
• Single-stock concentration shifts — a meaningful jump in MSFT or NVDA share counts (above the +5% QoQ baseline) would be an unusual signal from a custody book and worth flagging as a retail-conviction indicator.

For the full filer profile and downstream signals, see LPL Financial's filer page. Source filing: SEC EDGAR 13F-HR index for LPL Financial LLC (CIK 0001403438). For comparison reads on other broker-dealer 13F files, see the research hub.