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By Lisa Beilfuss WSJ Sun., April 28, 2019 When Walt Bettinger’s 3 a.m. alarm sounds, among the first things the Charles Schwab Corp. chief executive does is check how much net new money his company has pulled in over the past 24 hours. Last year, that was an average of $624 million a day—more than its three biggest Wall Street rivals combined. Schwab was known mostly as a discount broker for amateurs when he took the helm in 2008 from founder Charles R. “Chuck” Schwab. Now it resembles something more like a personal-finance supermarket, offering services for the wealthy and budget-minded alike, at rock-bottom prices, spanning trading, banking and advice, both human and robotic. Once barely noticed by the denizens of Wall Street, Schwab has amassed a stockpile of client assets that dwarfs those at Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley’s brokerage arm and UBS Group AG’s Americas unit. Its stock is up 76% since the … [Read more...] about How Schwab Ate Wall Street
Schwab free trades
Who Needs Free? Passive Fund Prices Flatline
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By Asjylyn Loder WSJ Tues., Feb. 19, 2019 Passive investing isn’t getting any cheaper, an indication that the much-ballyhooed race to zero is over, or at least on pause. Despite last summer’s hype about Fidelity Investments’s new zero-fee mutual funds, the price paid for index funds that invest in big U.S. companies barely budged in 2018, according to a report last week from Morningstar. In some categories, investors actually paid higher fees, and they don’t necessarily mind: for the first time in at least six years, investors rated fund performance as equally important as fund fees, according to an annual survey of 300 institutional investors, financial advisers and fund managers world-wide by Brown Brothers Harriman. That suggests even cost-conscious passive investors are willing to pay a little more, especially in turbulent markets, for strategies that can mitigate volatility, protect against drawdowns or offer steady income. “Quite … [Read more...] about Who Needs Free? Passive Fund Prices Flatline
The Latest Trend in Mobile Gaming: Stock-Trading Apps
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By Lisa Beilfuss WSJ Tues., Jan. 22, 2019 Morgan Snipes downloaded the Robinhood Markets Inc. app on his phone nine months ago with a plan to leave his day job behind. The stock market has turned into a game for inexperienced investors like 35-year-old Mr. Snipes, a small-business owner from Oklahoma City, thanks to commission-free trading apps. With simple designs, alerts and the ability to win free shares for recruiting friends, apps such as Robinhood, Webull, M1 Finance and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s You Invest have drawn millions of users who are typically young, new to the markets and experiencing volatility for the first time. Users say they check their app as often as their social-media accounts, trading to kill time with the hope of easy riches. “I’m new to investing and I’m attempting to make a profession out of it,” said Mr. Snipes, who started with $5,000 in his account and pays a monthly fee to purchase more buying power in … [Read more...] about The Latest Trend in Mobile Gaming: Stock-Trading Apps
Why ‘free trading’ on Robinhood isn’t really free
By Alexander Osipovich The Wall Street Journal Lisa Beilfuss Fri., Nov. 9, 2018 In the 1990s, online brokerages like E*Trade Financial Corp. were the hot, new way to play the stock market. Now, that title belongs to Robinhood Markets Inc., the Silicon Valley startup that has amassed six million users with a slick smartphone app, marketing aimed at millennials and commission-free trades. But Robinhood isn’t for everyone. And if you think that promise of free trading is too good to be true, you’re probably right. Founded in 2012 and recently valued at $5.6 billion (U.S.), Robinhood makes money, in part, by sending customer orders to high-frequency traders in exchange for cash. It’s a controversial but legal practice in the brokerage industry called payment for order flow. Robinhood says it makes free trading possible. “The revenue we receive from these rebates helps us cover the costs of operating our business and allows us to offer … [Read more...] about Why ‘free trading’ on Robinhood isn’t really free
Beware one huge mistake investors often make when the economy is at a crossroads, says Charles Schwab’s investment chief
Charles Schwab chief investment strategist Liz Ann Sonders says we are moving into the third phase of the economy where growth decelerates but you still have accelerating inflation. Sonders says “when it comes to the relationship between economic fundamentals and the stock market, better or worse matters more than good or bad. So understanding that it’s rate of change, it’s the market’s ability to sniff out an inflection point.” She says historically economic data is almost always fantastic at the market top and terrible at the bottom. Following is a transcript of the video. Sara Silverstein: What’s the current state of the US economy and where is it headed? Liz Ann Sonders:So we have had a view since we put out our 2018outlookthat we are late cycle and -but I think it requires a bit of a qualifier. I think it’s later in time terms, maybe not so late in temperature termsor – you know, later in calendar but not character. Whatever, … [Read more...] about Beware one huge mistake investors often make when the economy is at a crossroads, says Charles Schwab’s investment chief