Interactive Brokers LLC (NASDAQ:IBKR) saw 1.749 million daily average revenue trades, or DARTS, in August 2020 compared to 1.79 million transactions in the prior month. One thing to note is that there was 1 day less in August.
Although the figure is higher by nearly 90 percent on a yearly basis, the listed broker had seen this metric down by three percent relative to its July counterpart. Interactive Brokers is hardly the only platform seeing such strong growth this year as all of its publicly traded rivals have also doubled their trading volume from their 2019 totals.
Although most US brokers now offer commission-free trades on almost all Exchange -traded products, the so-called DARTs are still a key brokerage industry standard for measuring their clients’ activity.
Furthermore, Interactive Brokers has won more clients, with total August’s active accounts up to 948,000, or four percent higher from 912,700 accounts the previous month. The figure was higher by 44 percent year-over-year when compared to August 2019.
Interactive Brokers had further eased its recent restrictions on borrowed margins, which hit record lows over the last few months when the company sought to curb client’s bets amid Corona-spurred Volatility . The company’s ending client margin loan balances were around $30.4 billion in August 2020. This figure has climbed seven percent from $28.4 billion in July 2020, and was also higher by nearly 20 percent against the year prior.
On average, in August 2020, Interactive Brokers charged clients commission fees of $2.74 per order, relative to $2.78 in July. This figure includes exchange, clearing and regulatory fees, with the key products metrics coming out at $1.94 for stocks, $4.21 for equity options, and $4.21 for futures orders.
2020 has been the busiest trading year on record in the US, with almost all big brokers and major exchanges sensing the intensity of the huge turnover that was only seen in the depths of the financial crisis in October 2008., However, the rapid shifts in the retail scene resulted in Robinhood’s turnover to outperform all of the major incumbent brokerage firms.
