RIA trades at Schwab fell in April

The Charles Schwab Corp., the dominant broker-dealer for registered investment advisers, said today that RIA trades on behalf of clients in April fell 25% from the previous month to an average of 22,600 a day — the lowest volume level since last August.
The number reflects trades for clients in asset-based pricing relationships who do not pay commissions.
Average daily trading volume for both commission and non-commission trades from all Schwab clients fell 8% in April from March, but were up 24% from a year earlier.
The trading decline follows the San Francisco-based firm’s report last month that net new assets collected from advisers in the first quarter of 2009 plummeted 52% to $10 billion.
Schwab does not break out net new assets from RIA clients on a monthly basis, but total net new assets throughout its retail brokerage, RIA and corporate/retirement services businesses slumped 57% in April from March to $3.3 billion, and were down 13% from April 2008.
In a statement, the company said April asset inflows are typically low because clients harvest cash during tax season.
The slowdown in advisers’ trades on behalf of clients may also reflect that RIAs tend to have completed re-balancing of clients’ portfolios by the end of the first quarter.
Schwab, which is holding its annual meeting today, remains the largest provider of services to independent advisers, with a roster of about 5,700 adviser clients.
Its market share, as measured by assets it holds in custody for clients of RIAs, is about double that of second-place Fidelity Investments of Boston, according to Cerulli Associates Inc. of Boston.
Schwab does not break out commission trades by business sector, but throughout all its businesses, daily average commission trades fell 6% in April from March, to 313,400.
That, too, was the lowest level of revenue trades since August, and was lower than forecast by Richard Repetto, an analyst at Sandler O’Neill & Partners in New York.
In a report earlier this week, he said that rising equity markets appear to be stimulating more trades from retail investors in late April and May.
He predicted that commission-based trades from Schwab clients in April would match the 333,500 daily average of March.
Instead, they averaged 313,400 commission trades a day. Schwab has not disclosed trending trends for this month.
Compared with April 2008, however, both commission and non-commission trades from Schwab clients were up 25% and 24% respectively.
Rising markets helped boost total client assets at Schwab by 6% in April, to $1.2 trillion, from $1.1 trillion at the end of March.
The asset total was down 19% from the end of April 2008.
In another sign of recovering consumer confidence, Schwab reported positive net asset flows into seven of its eight mutual fund categories in April from the previous month.
In March, clients on a net basis withdrew assets from its four equity-style funds.
The only fund category that experienced net selling was money market funds, where low interest rates led to an outflow of $7.9 billion.