Ameritrade Shows Its Wings (AMTD, SCHW, ETFC)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Mar 26, 11:39AM EDT · Published Dec 18, 6:06PM EST

TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) has issued favorable metrics and upside guidance:

As of November 30, 2007, client assets totaled approximately $301 billion. Also, average investable assets amounted to $30.9 billion and average fee-based investment balances amounted to $58.1 Billion.
The online broker now currently expects its earnings per share to be approximately $0.39, well above the $0.27-$0.33 guidance range for the December quarter from the October guidance it offered.

Both TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab (NASDAQ:SCHW) earlier posted gains in November trades per day:

Ameritrade posted 339,000 trades per day, up almost 37%;
Schwab posted 344,400 trades per day, up almost 36%.

So the question remains: TD Ameritrade has an $11.55 Billion market cap, and Charles Schwab has a $27 Billion market cap. Which one will buy the rest of E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC) for its millions of online trading accounts first?

Shares of all three discount brokers are up marginally in after-hours trading. E*Trade now regularly appears in our "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter and also is routinely screened for our Special Situation Investing newsletter.

Jon C. Ogg
December 18, 2007

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.