GetCoattail Research — The Filing Tape #151. KeyCorp reported third-quarter earnings on October 20 — $0.51 a share, record revenue above $2 billion — and the stock rose about 4.5%. The June filings show a tracked register of exactly one manager, trimming; a full market that added 134.5 million shares; and an insider record with five purchases in it, none of them in the last year.
The Hype
The attention is an earnings print and a shareholder's echo of it. On October 20, 2026, KeyCorp held its third-quarter earnings call: earnings of $0.51 per share, up 24% year over year, record quarterly revenue of over $2 billion, up 8% year over year, and a return on tangible common equity that exceeded 15%, in the words of Chairman and CEO Chris Gorman opening the call. AlphaStreet transcript The next day, the Bank of Nova Scotia — KeyCorp's largest disclosed holder — announced that the expected net income contribution from its ownership interest in KeyCorp will be approximately CAD $96 million in its own fourth quarter, representing its share of KeyCorp's third-quarter net income on a one-month lag. Scotiabank via CNW The TrendEdge trending list checked October 22 carried the stock eighth, at $20.81, up 4.5% on volume of 33,040,014 shares. Our price file, which ends October 2, tells the path in: the stock rose 15.0% in the second quarter, from $20.05 on March 31 to $23.05 on June 30, then closed at $20.08 on October 2, down 12.9% from June 30. The filings answer who held it while it rose.
The Tape
For KeyCorp, the one hundred and fifty-first Filing Tape audit, the tape shows a one-manager tracked register that trimmed into a rising quarter, a full market that added filers and shares at twice the price gain, an insider record whose five purchases are all more than a year old, no congressional row, a 5% register headed by a single strategic 13D, and a borrow well below its own history.
| Lens | As of | What the filings show | Direction vs prior period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Superinvestors (13F) | Jun 30, 2026 | 1 holder of 147 tracked managers holds 1,597,019 shares; filed label: decreased | Verified against Q1 register: −3.7% (1,658,905 → 1,597,019 shares) |
| All institutions (13F) | Jun 30, 2026 | 938 filers; 939,944,304 shares; reported value $21,225,610,472 | Filers +56; shares +16.7%; reported value +34.17% |
| Insiders (Form 4) | Oct 2, 2026 | Last 90 days: 0 purchases, 1 sale of $568,500; last year: 0 purchases, 6 sales | Purchases exist only in the older record: 5 across all filings |
| Congress | Oct 3, 2026 | No row in the combined, House or Senate aggregates, and no row in the House member file | No congressional trade recorded in the collections |
| 13D/G | Apr 30, 2026 | 6 parsed filings (1 SC 13D, 5 SC 13G family); register maximum 14.9% | Latest filing, Apr 30, 2026, prints Vanguard Capital Management at 7.04% as of Mar 31, 2026 |
| Short interest (FINRA) | Sep 15, 2026 | 33,978,169 shares; 2.51 days to cover; 3.18% of the share count | Up 9.6% from the Jun 30, 2026 settlement; 42.6% below the series maximum |
Lens 1 — the superinvestors: a register of one, and it trimmed. The collection holds 147 managers (144 at June 30; 3 early filers at September 30, none holding this name). The June 30, 2026 common-stock register is 1 distinct manager holding 1,597,019 shares worth $36,811,288, long only, with no option rows. Richard Pzena - Pzena Investment Management holds all 1,597,019 shares, at a 0.11% weight, labelled DECREASED. The label verifies by two pairing methods (methodology): Pzena held 1,658,905 shares at March 31, a change of −3.7% that recomputes exactly, and both quarterly registers reconcile to the share with no remainder — no holder entered, and none exited. The register implies $23.05, the June 30 close exactly. At 0.17% of reported institutional shares, this cohort is a sample, not the register — here, a sample of one. 13F figures are as of June 30, 2026, published up to 45 days later.
Lens 2 — institutions: 56 more filers, 16.7% more shares. At June 30, 2026, 938 institutions reported positions on the name's single common-stock CUSIP, up 56 from 882 at March 31 (+6.35%); 936 are long. Reported shares rose 16.7% to 939,944,304 (+134,516,671 shares), and reported value rose 34.17% to $21,225,610,472, labelled "reported" because the aggregate includes option rows (methodology). Flow counts agree (841 entered, 785 exited, net +56), and the single-CUSIP aggregate matches the by-ticker total on every field. The aggregate implies $22.58 against the $23.05 close, a gap of −2.03% — small enough that the value gain reads as shares plus price: shares rose 16.7% in a quarter when the close rose 15.0%.
Lens 3 — insiders: five purchases in the record, none in a year. The parsed Form 4 record holds 158 filings through October 2, 2026. The last 90 days hold no open-market purchase, against 1 sale-coded row across 25,000 shares worth $568,500, by 1 seller, an officer row. The last year holds no purchase either, against 6 sale-coded rows across 233,278 shares worth $5,160,384.47, by 5 sellers, five of them officer rows. Across the full record: 5 purchases by 5 buyers across 61,030 shares worth $1,044,292.40, against 14 sale-coded rows across 540,132 shares worth $10,755,301.58, by 9 sellers. Every purchase in the record predates October 3, 2025. The implied prices — $22.74 for the 90-day sale, $22.12 over one year, $17.11 for the full-record purchases and $19.91 for the full-record sales — each sit inside their close ranges in our price file (methodology), and the site's 90-day aggregate matches the full parse exactly.
Lens 4 — Congress: no row anywhere. The combined and House aggregates (as of October 3, 2026) and the Senate aggregate (as of October 1, 2026) each carry no row for this name, and the House member file records no member with a KeyCorp position line. This lens is blank in a specific sense: no transaction appears in the congressional collections as collected, which is an absence of a row, not a verified count of zero trades (methodology).
Lens 5 — the 5% register: one strategic 13D, and a Vanguard handover in print. Our full parse holds 6 SC 13D/G filings: 1 SC 13D and 5 SC 13G family filings (3 of them amendments); 5 reporter names, one row each. The register maximum is the only 13D: The Bank of Nova Scotia, 162,981,232 shares and 14.9%, as of December 27, 2024, filed January 6, 2025 — the strategic stake whose earnings contribution Scotiabank quantified again this week. The passive prints move more. BlackRock printed 87,762,369 shares and 7.9% as of March 31, 2025. T. Rowe Price Associates printed 57,886,861 shares and 5.3% as of September 30, 2025, then 22,721,500 shares and 2.1% as of December 31, 2025. The Vanguard Group printed 0 shares and 0.0% as of March 13, 2026, and the latest filing in the register, filed April 30, 2026, prints Vanguard Capital Management at 75,581,332 shares and 7.04% as of March 31, 2026 (methodology).
Lens 6 — short interest: a third of the way down from its own peak. The latest FINRA settlement, September 15, 2026, records 33,978,169 shares sold short at 2.51 days to cover, 3.18% of the share count in our fundamentals file (methodology). It is down 4.18% from the prior settlement, up 9.6% from the June 30, 2026 settlement (31,008,803 shares) and down 16.4% from the year-ago settlement (40,636,105 shares). The series maximum is not recent: 59,213,458 shares at September 15, 2021, and the latest reading sits 42.6% below it. The six most recent settlements oscillate rather than trend: 31,008,803 (June 30), 30,021,584 (July 15), 33,052,085 (July 31), 28,588,494 (August 14), 35,459,458 (August 31) and 33,978,169 (September 15).
The Gap
The narrative arriving this week is a bank executing: record revenue, earnings up 24%, a return on tangible equity above 15%, and its largest shareholder publicly counting the contribution. The June tape, the most recent complete holdings picture, is quieter and points the other way at the tracked end. In a quarter when the price rose 15.0%, the tracked register's only manager cut its position by 61,886 shares; the cohort that this series exists to follow holds 0.17% of the institutional share count in this name. The full market did the opposite of the tracked sample: 56 more filers and 134.5 million more shares. Insiders sold in both recent windows and have not bought in a year, though the record does hold five older purchases — this is a recent silence, not a lifetime one. The borrow, at 3.18% of the share count, is unremarkable against its own history. One plausible reading is that KeyCorp's institutional story in 2026 is being carried by the broad register and by one strategic holder's 14.9%, while the concentrated, benchmarked managers this series tracks were never really in the name — a register of one, trimming, is what "the superinvestors" amount to here.
What Would Change the Picture
Nothing above is a recommendation. These filings would change it:
- 1. The 2026Q3 13F season (filing window closing mid-November 2026). The baseline is 1 June holder with 1,597,019 shares. Whether Pzena holds, adds or exits, and whether any of the other 146 tracked managers opens a position after the earnings quarter, would each change this lens.
- 2. A first insider open-market purchase in over a year, or further sales. The last year to October 2 holds 0 purchases against 6 sale-coded rows, and the full record's last purchase predates October 3, 2025. A purchase filed after October 2 would break the pattern; more sales would extend it.
- 3. A first congressional row, in either chamber. The combined, House and Senate aggregates carry no row for this name and the House member file records none. Any purchase or sale in either chamber would populate this blank lens.
- 4. A new 13D/G print above 14.9%, or a change in the Scotiabank block. The Bank of Nova Scotia's 162,981,232-share print is the register maximum and its only 13D. A filing that moves that block, or any print above 14.9%, would change this lens — as would a Vanguard print that follows the March handover between its two reporting names.
- 5. Short interest above 40,636,105 shares, or below 28,588,494 shares. Above the year-ago settlement would mark a genuine build; below the August 14, 2026 settlement would unwind the recent oscillation to a new recent low.
Related reading: Three of 147: Two New Holders Are 61.9% of the Tracked American Airlines Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.; Two of 147: One Holder Is 51.3% of the Tracked Braze Stake. Its Insiders Have Never Bought a Share.. Hertz' own page: Hertz (HTZ) on GetCoattail.
Methodology and data notes
- As-of & limits: The lenses rest on different clocks, none live: 13F is a June 30, 2026 snapshot published up to 45 days later; Form 4 runs through October 2, 2026; Congress aggregates run through October 3, 2026 (Senate through October 1, 2026); 13D/G through April 30, 2026; short interest through September 15, 2026; the price file ends October 2, 2026. Nine limits are specific to this audit. First, the roster expanded before the recent audits — from 85 managers (83 filing) to 149 (147 filing) — so "of 147" counts are not comparable to earlier pieces' "of 83" figures. Second, this name's common stock carries a single CUSIP (493267108), and the full-market by-CUSIP row matches the by-ticker aggregate on every field — holders, long holders, shares, reported value, prior holders and prior reported value — so no CUSIP blending question arises. Third, the tracked register's change label is verified, not taken on trust: the single continuing holder was verified by two pairing methods — accession-prefix matching and accession identity plus CUSIP-overlap (149 overlapping CUSIPs, uniquely paired) — with its label recomputing exactly (Pzena, −3.7% on 1,658,905 first-quarter shares). The registers then reconcile exactly: the June 30 register holds 1,597,019 shares, equal to the June cohort with no remainder, because none of the three September 30 early filers holds this name. Fourth, the full-market aggregate implies $22.58 against the June 30 close of $23.05 (−2.03%): the aggregate is a reported sum that includes option rows, so its implied price need not equal the close; this audit uses filer counts and share counts as this lens's primary measures and reports the value as reported only. Fifth, the insider implied prices ($22.74 over 90 days against a $20.05–$23.99 close range; $22.12 over one year against $16.78–$23.99; purchases $17.11 and sales $19.91 over the full record against $8.93–$27.01) sit inside their ranges. The site's 90-day insider aggregate (dated October 21, 2026) matches the full parse's 90-day window exactly (0 purchases, 1 sale, $568,500). Sixth, the Congress lens is an absence, stated as such: the combined aggregate (as of October 3, 2026), the House aggregate (October 3, 2026), the Senate aggregate (October 1, 2026) and the House member file (politicians_members.json, as of October 3, 2026; window: 2026 House PTR filings, transactions dated on or after April 1, 2026) all carry no row for this name. An absent row means no transaction appears in the collections as collected; it is not a verified zero. Seventh, the 5% register's cross-date share total of 406,933,294 is an arithmetic sum of six single-reporter rows across different as-of dates, not a current combined stake; each filing in this register carries exactly one reporter row, so no joint-reporting duplication arises. The Vanguard sequence — The Vanguard Group at 0 shares as of March 13, 2026, then Vanguard Capital Management at 75,581,332 shares as of March 31, 2026 — is reported as printed, without attributing a reason. Parsed totals match the aggregates exactly. Eighth, the short-interest series holds one step of 2x or more — 4.986x at September 15, 2021, from 11,876,525 to the series-maximum 59,213,458 shares — followed by a 0.566x step at the next settlement; no row in that pair carries a split flag, our price file records no split for this name, and no step in the series falls to one-half or less (the 0.566x step is the smallest). Four rows carry a FINRA revision flag (June 15, 2021; May 31, 2023; July 31, 2023; August 31, 2023). The series minimum is a boundary settlement — its first (January 15, 2021) — so no "above the low" comparison is made. The issuer-name field reads "KeyCorp" at all 137 settlements, on a single market class (NYSE) throughout. The share count behind the short-interest percentage is 1,067,128,554 shares outstanding in our fundamentals file (as of July 31, 2026), against which the latest borrow is 3.18%. Ninth, our price file records no split for this name and no single-day close move crosses the thresholds this audit normally treats as split patterns. The company's fundamentals as collected print fiscal 2025 revenue of $7,513,000,000, net income of $1,829,000,000 and assets of $184,381,000,000 (fiscal year ended December 31, 2025); those figures are reported as collected and are not used in any lens above. Every price statement from our own file is mechanical, a date and a close. The October figures in The Hype — the $20.81 price, the 4.5% rise and the 33,040,014-share volume — are list figures published after our price file ends, and are cited as such, not blended into file-based calculations.
- Market context sources: KeyCorp third-quarter 2026 earnings call, October 20, 2026, as transcribed by AlphaStreet (earnings of $0.51 per share, up 24% year over year; record quarterly revenue of over $2 billion, up 8% year over year; return on tangible common equity exceeding 15% — opening remarks of Chairman and CEO Chris Gorman). Scotiabank press release via CNW, October 21, 2026, "Scotiabank announces Expected Contribution from KeyCorp's Third Quarter Earnings…" (expected net income contribution from its KeyCorp ownership interest of approximately CAD $96 million in Scotiabank's fourth quarter, approximately CAD $104 million adjusted, reported on a one-month lag). TrendEdge trending list, checked October 22, 2026 (KeyCorp eighth among trending names, behind covered IREN, covered BRZE, covered AAL, a leveraged ETF, covered HTZ, covered CLF and previously skipped RKT, at +4.5% on a price of $20.81 and volume of 33,040,014 shares; below it sat foreign issuer WIT and covered GM). Figures we could not confirm were left out; the external items above are reported speech from those outlets, not GetCoattail measurements.
- KeyCorp is in the GetCoattail stock-page universe: KeyCorp (KEY) stock page. Series data: key_lens_data.csv · key_short_interest_series.csv. Earlier audits: Hertz · American Airlines.
Past patterns are not a promise of future results. For education only — not investment advice.
This article describes public filings as of the dates stated. It is not investment advice and makes no recommendation. Filings lag reality: 13F positions are as of June 30, 2026, and later trading is not yet public.
Revision history: v1.0 — October 22, 2026: first publication.