| 12 March 2010

The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW) checked in today with monthly activity highlights for February. The firm gained $7.9 billion in net new assets in February -- a 37% gain over last year and a 2% gain over January. Trading activity, however, was markedly down to just over 302,000 DARTs. This represents a 14% decline from year-ago figures and a 15% decline from January.

Joe Martinetto, Schwab's CFO, lowered guidance significantly for the first quarter. He said that he expects the firm's first quarter results to be 28% lower than fourth quarter's results of $0.14 per share. He told analysts to expect $0.10 per share. Previous guidance was set at $0.15 per share.

We wrote earlier about Schwab's effort to focus on advisor services, retirement services and banking in order to offset the expected decline in trading activity. The company decided to raise upwards of $480 million in a public offering announced earlier, specifically to drive new banking account activity.

TD Ameritrade's (AMTD) CEO Fred Tomczyk commented yesterday that his firm and others in the space aren't likely to see much more growth in trading activity. “You do worry about how much further you can go on the trading side,” he said.

Mr. Martinetto said in a statement released by the firm that they intend to invest in business growth. "We also intend to increase our first quarter marketing investment by approximately 25% over fourth quarter levels as we ramp up a new national advertising campaign heading into tax season, traditionally a period of strong IRA growth for us," he said.