Schwab clients increased their SDBA balances in the first quarter

But what were their preferred investment options?

The average account balance for Charles Schwab clients’ self-directed brokerage accounts was $328,239 in the first quarter of 2024, a near 10% increase year-over-year.

The firm’s benchmark on retirement plan participant investment activity, the SDBA Indicators Report, reveals that the average balance was up almost 6% from the fourth quarter of 2023 as investors bolstered their retirement savings through workplace plans.

Those investors with advised accounts had a significantly higher average balance than non-advised peers – $526,997 vs. $286,431 – and those with advised accounts were led by Gen Xers (52% of accounts), followed by Boomers (25%), and Millennials (19%). Gen Xers accounted for approximately 46% of the Schwab SDBAs held, with Boomers making up 27% and Millennials 21%.

Boomers had the largest average balance at $531,201, followed by Gen X at $318,481 and Millennials at $119,278.

Similar to the previous quarter, SDBA investors focused the largest share of their allocations to equities (34.1%) with tech firms including Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, Tesla, and Microsoft the largest sector holding (34.6%).

The second largest allocation was to mutual funds (28.4%) and dominated by large-cap stocks (34.2%) followed by money market funds (15%), and taxable bond funds (14.4%). ETFs took a 24.4% share of allocations with U.S equities accounting for almost 52% followed by U.S. fixed income (12.8%), international equity (11.9%) and sector (9.5%) ETFs.

Just 8.1% of allocations were to cash and equivalents while 5.1% of assets were held in fixed income.

On average, participants held 11.8 positions in their SDBAs at the end of first quarter of 2024, the same as the fourth quarter of 2023 and slightly lower than the first quarter of 2023.