LPL Financial Reports Improvement In Activity For August

LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA) recorded total brokerage and advisory assets of $551.4 billion in August 2017, up 0.3% from the previous month. Of these, brokerage assets were $306.1 billion while advisory assets were $245.3 billion.

Further, LPL Financial’s total net new assets increased 22.2% from the prior month to $1.1 billion in August.

The company reported $28.3 billion of total client cash sweep balances for August, up 3.7% from July. Of the total cash balance, $22 billion was insured cash, $4 billion was deposit cash and the remaining $2.3 billion was money market balance.

As the global equity markets have been stabilizing gradually, trading activities are likely to improve. Also, LPL Financial has been extending its offerings to all affiliated advisors, which is expected to help the company gain greater market share.

LPL Financial’s price performance also seems encouraging. Shares of the company have rallied 38.7% so far this year, outperforming the 1.5% gain for the industry it belongs to. Given the strong fundamentals, we expect this upbeat price performance to continue in the near term as well.



Nonetheless, the company’s Zacks Consensus Estimate for current-year earnings has remained stable over the last 30 days. As a result, LPL Financial currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Performance of Other Investment Brokers

E*TRADE Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:ETFC) reported a rise in its Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) for August 2017 on a year-over-year basis. According to its monthly market activity report, the company’s DARTs were 206,572, up a staggering 44% year over year. Notably, derivatives comprised 31% of DARTs for August.

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ:AMTD) reported average client trades per day of 504,000 in its activity report for August 2017. Though the reported figure is down 2% from the prior-month tally, it increased 19% from the year-ago period.

Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:IBKR) Electronic Brokerage segment reported a year-over-year increase in DARTs for August 2017. Total client DARTs were 696,000, up 21% from August 2016 and relatively stable with July 2017. Also, total customer accounts jumped 23% year over year and 3% from the prior month to 448,900.

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