The Week in Deregulation: Drug Middlemen, Repo and Bank Exams

Six rule changes crossed my desk this week, and every one of them moved in the same direction: less paperwork, more disclosure, and a clock on regulators who used to have none. The Labor Department's pharmacy benefit rule moves the most money, with up to $22 billion in projected plan savings over 10 years. The smallest, the FDIC's plan to stop making 31 big banks build its deposit insurance calculator, still sends the clearest signal. My six stock ideas are mixed on price, three up and three down, but all six held up better than the S&P 500 fund over their own windows on a week that fund fell 2.7%. One week is noise, so read the scoreboard as a log and not a verdict.

Key Highlights

• The biggest move: Labor's final PBM rule requires pharmacy benefit managers to disclose fees and compensation to 131,102 self-insured employer plans with 100 or more participants, with an annual audit right and projected savings of as much as $22 billion over 10 years (PBMs Must Now Show 131,102 Employer Plans What They Keep).
• The best design: The SEC's repo clearing exit caps uncleared foreign repo at 25% from June 30, 2027 and steps it down to 10% after June 30, 2030 (The SEC Opened a Repo Clearing Exit).
• The fastest relief: A new OCC and FDIC definition of "unsafe or unsound" took effect Nov. 2, and the FDIC says a large majority of open exam criticisms will be closed out (Most Open Bank Exam Criticisms Are Going Away).
• The scoreboard: Constellation Energy leads at +4.0% from my entry, and Hennessy Advisors trails at -3.3%. The six average +0.07%, against a 2.2% to 4.1% decline for the S&P 500 fund over the same windows.¹
• Next week: Constellation reports third-quarter results Monday before the open, October CPI lands Tuesday at 8:30 a.m. ET, and October PPI follows Friday.²

The week's moves, ranked

I rank these by how much money they move and how hard they will be to undo, not by how many headlines they got.

1. The Labor Department made PBMs show their math. For years an employer running a self-insured health plan bought drugs through a middleman who would not say what he kept. The final rule, issued under ERISA's service provider exemption, requires PBMs and their affiliated brokers and consultants to disclose what drug makers pay them, the spread they keep between plan and pharmacy, and what they claw back from pharmacies, with an annual audit right. The department counts 131,102 plans with 100 or more participants and about $81.8 billion of prescription spending among the adults in them. Express Scripts, CVS Caremark and Optum Rx handle about 80% of U.S. prescriptions. Winners: employers and the consultants who help them rebid contracts. Losers: opaque spread pricing (my Nov. 1 piece).

2. The SEC gave repo an exit with a door that closes. Release No. 34-106789 lets a big bank's foreign desks keep a capped share of repo with foreign clients off the clearinghouse. The cap starts at 25% and falls to 20%, 15% and then 10% after June 30, 2030. Firms under $5 billion of qualifying non-U.S. repo are exempt outright. U.S. repo averaged $12.75 trillion a day from July 2025 to February 2026. This is relief designed the right way: it buys time without pretending the mandate went away. Winners: dealers with large foreign books, and the clearinghouses that will absorb the volume as the cap shrinks (my Nov. 2 piece).

3. Bank examiners lost the right to write up messy paperwork. Since Nov. 2, an examiner needs a likely material hit to capital, earnings, liquidity or asset quality, or an actual violation of law, before issuing a Matter Requiring Attention. The FDIC has already reviewed every open criticism and says a large majority fail the new test. The OCC expects direct savings that "will likely exceed $100 million" a year. Fixed compliance cost weighs most on the smallest banks, which is why I think they win the most here (my Nov. 3 piece).

4. The NRC put a clock on reactor hearings. Contested hearings now run on three tracks with published completion dates of 262, 217 and 147 to 162 days after the hearing notice, and hearings start as soon as a challenge is admitted. The rule takes effect Dec. 3, 2026. The NRC expects 31 power uprate applications through 2032, and 12 belong to Constellation. Winners: anyone trying to add megawatts to an existing plant. Losers: delay as a litigation strategy (my Nov. 4 piece).

5. The SEC redefined small. For the first time since 1998, the SEC raised the line for a small fund to $10 billion in family net assets and for a small adviser to $1 billion in regulatory assets. Under the new lines, about three in four advisers count as small while holding under 3% of industry assets. Nothing changes in anyone's compliance manual today. What changes is that every future SEC rule has to account for these firms when it weighs costs (my Nov. 5 piece).

6. The FDIC proposed taking back a job it handed 31 big banks. Since 2016, banks with 2 million or more deposit accounts have had to build their own deposit insurance calculation systems. The FDIC board voted unanimously to propose rescinding that rule, Part 370. The savings are about $33 million a year across banks holding about $11.8 trillion of domestic deposits, which is small. The signal is that the agency is willing to take back work it pushed onto the industry (my Oct. 31 piece).

The idea scorecard

Each piece carries one stock idea. Here is where each stands against the price I logged, next to the S&P 500 fund (SPY) from the close before I logged it. Prices are Perplexity Finance quotes at Friday's close. This is price only, not advice and not a track record.

The comparison flatters me this week, and I want to be plain about why. The S&P 500 fund fell 4.4% on Thursday alone, from $766.81 to $733.00, so any idea logged before that day looks better by comparison.¹ Constellation is the one real mover. It sold off hard on the election results the day I wrote it up, and it has recovered 4% since.³

What the week says

Read the six together and a pattern shows up. None of these is a repeal for its own sake. Labor added disclosure to a market that hid prices. The SEC kept its clearing mandate but gave it a glide path. The bank regulators defined a vague phrase so an examiner has to show harm. The NRC put deadlines on its own process. That is what good deregulation looks like to me: fewer rules that exist to protect the rule writer, and more rules that make a market show its prices and its timelines.

The risk is the one I flag every week. Rules that move this fast can move back just as fast after an election, and this week's markets reminded everyone that elections move prices. The ones that will last are the ones that change behavior before anyone can reverse them: contracts rebid under the PBM rule, criticisms already closed out, and repo volume already moving to clearing.

What to watch next week

Monday, Nov. 9: Constellation Energy reports third-quarter results before the open, with a call at 9:00 a.m. ET. Management said it would revisit its full-year outlook on this call.³

Tuesday, Nov. 10: October CPI at 8:30 a.m. ET, the last CPI report before the Fed's December meeting.^{4, 5}

Friday, Nov. 13: October PPI at 8:30 a.m. ET.²

Further out: the NRC hearing tracks take effect Dec. 3, CME's Treasury clearinghouse is set to open Dec. 7, cash Treasury trades must clear by Dec. 31 under the SEC mandate, and comments on the FDIC's Part 370 proposal are due Jan. 4, 2027.⁶

If you know someone who runs a health plan, a bank or an advisory firm, this week's list is worth forwarding. Every one of these rules lands on their desk.

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