| 05 April 2010

Interactive Brokers (IBKR) released their March performance metrics on Friday but we took our time to develop the charts you see below. This is new for us and something we also did for E*TRADE (ETFC) and optionsXpress (OXPS). We'll continue to develop this look for more brokers going forward -- comments and suggestions welcome.

In the case of Interactive Brokers' March update, we can see the company's DARTs continued to fall. Though accounts and assets are up, trades are off 9% from year-ago figures. This is actually a better performance than most other brokers, which have seen upwards of 20% dips in trading activity in March.

First, taking a closer look at Daily Average Revenue Trades, we see the slide in activity that's been occuring since January. The question now is whether the firm can stabilize the drop and hold trading levels above last summer's low.



Net new accounts for the firm did find a bit of a floor last month. While this number tends to bounce around a bit for all brokers we like to see it in a 20-30% range all things being equal. Marketing spend is arguably the biggest factor affecting the net new account number, but Interactive Brokers, like most brokers, doesn't report its marketing spend on a monthly basis.



Finally we take a look at Total Customer Assets. Here Interactive Brokers has seen steady growth. More steady, in fact, than what we've seen from E*TRADE and optionXpress, for example.



Interactive Brokers is different than most other online brokers, we realize. Their market-making segment, for example, was once a huge winner but it has taken a beating lately. For our purposes, however, we are focusd on the performance of the brokerage as compared with other similar brokerages in the space.