Charles Schwab

On an ordinary day over the last month of trading, SCHW has moved about 1.35%, making it a little calmer than most of the stocks Kinzan tracks (their median is 1.81%).

Measured against its own habit, today is a −0.7σ day: the kind of session it has most weeks.

It sits in the lower half of its 24-hour range of 90.31–91.68, measured on hourly closes.

Most of the move came in the New York session (13:00–22:00 UTC), which accounted for about 89% of the day's price action.

Over the last 60 sessions of daily returns, it has moved most closely with JPM (+0.60, a strong relationship).

Its last close is at the 5th percentile of its own last 82 sessions, and its 20-day volatility at the 39th.

Market read: Charles Schwab is trending toward its daily low, showing persistent weakness.

What it is

Schwab looks after investment accounts for millions of individual investors and is one of the largest custodians for independent financial advisers. It sells its own index funds and exchange-traded funds, offers advice, and runs bank subsidiaries that take in the cash clients leave uninvested. Its acquisition of TD Ameritrade, completed in 2020, added a large base of active traders. Online trading of US shares has been commission-free across the industry since 2019, so the business earns its money elsewhere: interest on client cash, fees on assets in its funds and advisory programmes, and a smaller stream of trading-related revenue from options, margin lending and order routing.

What drives it

Client cash is the crucial variable. Money swept from brokerage accounts into Schwab’s banks is invested in securities and loans, and the spread between what that earns and what clients are paid makes net interest revenue the largest line in the accounts. When rates rose quickly in 2022 and 2023, clients moved cash into higher-yielding money market funds, a process the company called cash sorting. Schwab had to replace the lost deposits with more expensive short-term borrowing while its own securities, bought when yields were low, showed large unrealised losses. The shares fell sharply during the regional bank stress of March 2023 as a result. Client cash levels and the cost and pace of repaying that extra funding have been watched closely ever since. Asset-based fees rise and fall with markets, and net new assets measure how well it is winning business from rivals.

How it trades through the day

Schwab publishes a monthly activity report covering net new assets, new accounts and client balances, giving the market a datapoint between quarters. Quarterly results arrive before the US open, in the same window as the banks. The cash session runs from 13:30 to 20:00 UTC in summer and 14:30 to 21:00 UTC in winter. Federal Reserve decisions and short-term yields can move the shares as much as company news.

What it tends to move with

Its closest peers are Interactive Brokers, Robinhood and LPL Financial, and the wealth arms of the large banks. It moves with the level of the equity market through its fee income, and at times of funding stress it has traded with the regional banks.