They're Baack - Online brokers resume rise
By Greg Morcroft, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 1:02 PM ET June 10, 2003
NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Publicly traded online brokers led the financial sector's gainers Tuesday amid continuing signs that small investors aided the recent market rally.
Privately held Scottrade provided the latest bit of fuel for the sector Tuesday, reporting that its clients made a record number of trades last Friday. "The incredible trading records we have been setting over the past few weeks speaks volumes about investor confidence and the market's health," Scottrade President Rodger Riney said.
Scottrade rivals Charles Schwab (SCH: news, chart, profile), Ameritrade (AMTD: news, chart, profile) and E-Trade (ET: news, chart, profile) rose 1.8 percent, 1.6 percent and 3.8 percent, respectively.
Ameritrade is expected to report May trading data this Friday, and Putnam Lovell analyst Richard Repetto expects the broker to tally in the range of 155,000 to 160,000 trades per day in May. That's a 25 percent to 30 percent gain from April volumes.
Schwab is likely to report trading data by this Friday, but the company did not immediately return calls seeking a confirmation of the date.
"Based on our spot checks with private industry sources, we expect online trading volumes to be up 25 to 30 percent sequentially in May, higher than our previous expectation of up 15 percent to 20 percent," he added.
Knight Trading, a leading market maker in Nasdaq stocks is also due to report trading data Friday.
"We believe strong market performance and surging Nasdaq volumes should bode well for Knight's overall trading volumes. However, we believe revenue capture per share remains under pressure," Repetto said in a research note Monday.
And, according data from Jefferies and Co, average daily Nasdaq trading volumes topped 2.5 billion shares per day last week, the highest weekly average since April 2001.
"When the markets seemed frozen in February, the Nasdaq averaged less than 1.3 billion shares per day, or about half of last week's average," according to Jefferies.
Greg Morcroft is New York news editor of CBS.MarketWatch.com. |
