Interactive Brokers doubles client accounts to 2 million in 24 months
Electronic brokerage firm Interactive Brokers LLC (NASDAQ:IBKR) said its trading volumes took a slight step back in September, an indication that investor confidence is still fairly mixed over the past few months.
During September 2022, the number of DARTs was reported at 1.961 million transactions, slightly down month-over-month from 1.968 million in August. Over a year-on-year basis, Interactive Brokers saw a notable drop in its DARTs with September’s figure down by 13 percent relative to 2.01 million reported in September 2021.
In terms of equity balance in customers’ accounts during September 2022, the figure totaled $287 billion, down by 19 percent on a yearly basis. Interactive Brokers also failed to best its August equivalent, having notched a seven percent drop relative to the prior month.
Elsewhere, the discount brokerage has won 25,000 new accounts as volatile markets had seemingly revived interest from retail investors. September’s active accounts increased to 2.01 million, or 1 percent higher from August and 31 percent above the previous year’s figure of 1.49 million accounts. At this pace, Interactive Brokers has crossed the two million milestone for the first time in the company’s 44-year history.
IBKR had a busy month
Interactive Brokers had been in the news over the past few weeks. Most recently, the discount broker widened access to cryptocurrency trading for its clients, having extended trading hours for its cryptocurrency products to be traded 24/7, including on the weekends.
Before that, cryptocurrency traders at Interactive Brokers were having their contracts expire each week on Friday, and these were rolled over to the next week. This was instituted to prevent potential gaps that could be incurred by clients to reflect price changes while IBKR trading was closed outside of trading hours.
The broker offers low-cost cryptocurrency trading to its clients via partnership with New York-based exchange and stablecoin issuer, Paxos.
The changes applied by Interactive Brokers help resolve some of the underlying issues that have made it challenging for traders to have access to cryptocurrency trading around the clock. Namely, the extended trading hours eliminate the inconvenience of carrying positions from one week to the next without weekend quotes.
