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Please to saying that joining us around the table here in New York request of the President and CEO of Child swamp Rick is good to see us.
Sir Jonathan, thanks for having me in.
Approaching one hundred days in the job. Have you slept.
It's been a busy period. We've been actively supporting our clients and helping them get to where they need to be in their financial life, so probably not as much sleep as I would like.
I'm sure you're probably not going to catch up on sleep anytime soon, given the headlines we've got elsewhere. Looking at those forty four million client accounts just help us understand what activities look like, how they're responding to all of this incoming information.
Our clients are actively engaged. Last year, we did about six million trades a day on average. In January we did seven million. We're doing even more of the last six weeks, so our clients are engaged. We're not seeing any signs of significant nervousness. In fact, we've seen our margin levels over the last months stay relatively flat. Those
with margin have been leaning inequities. The last week I went and visited five of our retail branches in North Carolina yesterday and I walked into our Raleigh branch and met Gloria, who's at our front desk, and I asked her, Gloria, what are clients saying when they come in our doors? Are they nervous? And she said, you know what, We've had a couple that are nervous, but more than anything, they're bringing in checks and they want to get more
money into the market. So I thought that was a good sign.
This is fascinating and it really skews with some of what we're hearing from Wall Street analysts who are saying we're just looking for the right levels to buy the dip, and it sounds like retail investors have been conditioned in the same way. At what point are you going to get worried that maybe they're being conditioned in the wrong way? Say, if there isn't that balance that we've become used to.
Well in the seventies, Check wrote our investing principles, and they're all about taking a long term view of markets being diversified, having a plan, and sticking with that plan. And I think when markets go up, when markets go down, those are the principles we come back to it's hard to have a view on short term what's going to happen on markets. Those investing principles we think work and you're seeing it this year where at diversified portfolio, European
stocks are doing well, Gold's doing well. There's assets that are performing well. So our clients that have taken that advice are hanging in there.
So retail investors are often painted with a brush where they buy Bitcoin and Tesla and AMC and game Stop and then they held the breath and keep buying when things go down. What is the picture of the retail client of Charles Schwab that you're going after.
Well, we see seven million plus trades a day. We see more than two times of trades of any other retail brokerage. So we do feel like we have a pulse on how retail investors trade, and I think they trade very thoughtfully. We've got a range of investors, some of who are buying Tesla, who are have been invested in bitcoin and made a lot of money doing so. But we also have a lot of investors that play
for the long term. But I think, you know, our investors are really thoughtful, they're engaged they listen to your show, they listen to Lasana and Jeff clientp and our thoughtful anelsts trying to make the right long term decision for them and their financial plan.
I'm getting to center you that your investors are not concerned about the uncertainty emanating from Washington, DC.
I think again, we try to coach our investors to take a long term view. I'm sure we have clients that are that are nervous about whatever the policy of the day may be or the news flow of the day. But in large part, one of the great things about SCHWAB is we have a lot of different ways to engage clients. We've spoken with over six hundred thousand clients
in the last week. We're able to remind them that they have a plan, that these are the times to stick to their plan, and we try to remove them from the news cycle.
So this is token to you as a market ponticipant. Let's talk to you as a business leader. You've got to run a company. We're hanging from a lot of companies right now that they're just hitting polls and they're waiting to get Clarency on policy. I imagine you'll not hitting polls. Can you woc us through what your plan looks like for the next several years.
We're not hitting pause at all. Twenty twenty five is a lift off year for our company. We've spent the last couple of years integrating a maror trade industry, and now we have the benefit of having the best of everything that Schwab has and the best of everything Ameritrade has for our clients. So the future is all about growth and we are seeing our growth accelerating through the
first quarter. We've seen significant levels of client engagement. So it's for us from a business standpoint where we are thriving.
So you're not cutting down on travel and forcfway to come back to the office and saying, guys, it's time to tighten the ship.
We've not taken any of those actions.
Okay.
The reason what we ask is if we're wondering how much this is trickling out, although it could be a somewhat counter cyclical business as you go forward, when you are expanding, who are you going after at a time where a lot of the big private asset firms are trying to broaden out into private markets for retail clients, and that's the increasing holy grail for a lot of the big banks as well. Who are you going after? Who's your competitor?
Well, in terms of who we're working with, we work with clients across all age and wealth spectrums and advisors of all sizes. You know, we have one out of every six American households with more than twenty million dollars in our country works with Charles Schwab. And at the same time, we're crushing it with young investors. Sixty percent of our new investors last year we're under the age of forty and a third we're under the age of thirty.
So we are really thriving across age and wealth spectrums. There is a lot of demand for alternative assets, and we're working with great firms like KKR and others that are bringing their capabilities to the retail investor, and I think that's a great thing. Historically that's been for institutions only, and now we can bring it to our retail clients.
Are other business leaders you talk to as confident and as excited as you.
Are, Well, their business has their own dynamics. For us, you know, we're in a lift off fields them.
The reason why I'm asking is because we've been talking about uncertainty and we're seeing it in the data, whether it's small business confidence, whether it's business confidence. More broadly, are you saying you just don't see it or are you saying that your business is somewhat immune to it.
We feel like we have an all weather business model. The newsflow for us that drives activity and engagement, and it brings investors into the market. And you know, we've had seven eight million trades a day, which is a lot for our business and drives our economics. So you know,
the market engagement is a good thing for us. You know, at the end of the day, what's most important to us so is that our clients are doing well, and that's where we put our energy into making sure we can help them in the channel of their choice, get to where they want to be in their financial life. That's what drives us. When our clients do well, we do well.
Rick, what's it like working with the president because you are advising them on this offspin of this Trump linked truthfi associated with Trump media.
Well, we've worked with administrations and regulators for fifty years, and we've tried to work with clients across all aisles we are supportive of our country. We are Americans. We support forty four million American client accounts, and we want investors of all types to do well well.
The financial services industry might have a new regulations and this is a name we've got for you. According to a person familiar with the matter, the Trump administration will nominate Federal Reserve Governor Mickey Bowman as Vice Chair for Supervision as soon as today. You will recall that Michael Barr, of course, resigned earlier on this year as the FED Vice Chair for Supervision. Mickey Bowman, of course nominated by President Trump in his first term to become a governor
of the Federal Reserve. A lot of people not seeing this as a surprise. I matched this morning. This is a name we had in the hat, not just for this role, but also for the FED chair role that might open up further down the road, right, And.
This is someone that Trump administration has looked kindly on first person for people to put her there in the chair. So this really isn't a surprise, but it is interesting. We are getting some clarity as we keep talking about uncertainty coming out of Washington. This is one place where we do have a name and some clarification.
It also means that she's not going to be nominated to be potentially fed chair, which opens up the seat to potentially somebody else who seems to maybe want to be fed Chair.
Rick afinal word on regulation, Have you got everything you want?
I think Governor Roman's going to be a great choice her personally. I think she's a very thoughtful person. It's going to be great for the great, great for supervision. I imagine a lot of people might agree with you. Rick, it's going to see us, sir, thanks for breaking things down for us. Appreciate the update, Thanks for having me on, and thanks for being a good friend of this program over the years too.
We appreciate it. Rick west of There, the Chow Swap CEO,