Interactive Brokers February DARTs Up Amid Coronavirus Fears

Interactive Brokers Group (NASDAQ:IBKR) has released its Electronic Brokerage segment’s performance metrics for February 2020. The segment, which deals with the clearance and settlement of trades for individual and institutional clients globally, reported an increase in Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) as concerns over coronavirus resulted in a rise in trading activities.

Total client DARTs were 1,346,000, surging 32% from January 2020 and 63% from February 2019. On an annualized basis, the company recorded Cleared Average DARTs per customer accounts of 423,000. This reflects a rise of 29% sequentially and 41% year over year.

Further, total customer accounts grew 2% from the prior month and 17% from the prior-year month to 719,700. Also, net new accounts were 15,100, increasing 3% from January2020 and 104% from February 2019.

Interactive Brokers’ total options contracts were 41.8 million, rising8% from January 2020 and 82% year over year. Futures contracts grew 26% on a sequential basis and 75% from the year-ago month to 14.9 million.

At the end of February, client equity was $170.1 billion, down3% sequentially butup 18% year over year. Moreover, Interactive Brokers recorded client credit balance of $59.6 billion, up 1% on a sequential basis and 14% from February 2019. The company’s customer margin loan balance of $28.9 billion grew6% from January 2020and 12% from the prior-year month.

Shares of Interactive Brokers have rallied 16.3% so far this year against 10.5% fall for the industry it belongs to.



The stock currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Among other investment brokers, LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA) , Charles Schwab (NYSE:SCHW) and E*TRADE Financial (NASDAQ:ETFC) are likely to report monthly metrics information in the coming days.

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