Retail Trading Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis, Digital Finance & Fintech | Last updated: September 7, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
The US consolidated tape carried 343.92 billion shares in August 2026, statistically unchanged from August 2025. It carried them in 2.71 billion separate trades, 22.15% more than a year earlier. The market did not trade more stock in 2026. It trades the same stock in far smaller pieces, and the pieces are getting smaller every month.
Quick Answer
According to Axis Intelligence Research, off-exchange venues executed 50.55% of US consolidated equity share volume in August 2026 but 45.79% of all trades, up 442 basis points of trade-count share in twelve months. The average off-exchange execution fell to 140.24 shares from 190.15 a year earlier, a 26.25% decline. Our Retail Order Size Index reached 82.6 in August 2026 against 68.7 in August 2025.
Key Findings
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Cboe consolidated market volume files, US equity trade count reached 2,707,162,174 in August 2026, up 22.15% year over year, while total share volume of 343,918,898,284 was 0.02% lower than August 2025.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, off-exchange trade reporting facilities handled 45.79% of all consolidated US equity trades in August 2026, the highest share in our computed series, against 41.37% in August 2025.
- According to Axis Intelligence Research, the average off-exchange execution size fell from 190.15 shares in August 2025 to 140.24 shares in August 2026, while the average on-exchange execution fell from 130.55 to 115.89 shares over the same period.
- According to the Charles Schwab Corporation, client daily average trades reached 11.6 million in July 2026, up 61% from July 2025, with 417,000 new brokerage accounts opened in the month.
- According to Interactive Brokers Group, the firm cleared 4.276 million daily average revenue trades in August 2026 at an average commission of $2.52 per cleared commissionable order, with an average US Reg-NMS stock trade of $22,288.
How Much Equity Volume Does the US Market Actually Trade in 2026?
Every share that changes hands in a US National Market System stock is printed either to an exchange or to a FINRA trade reporting facility. The Cboe historical market volume files, built from the UTDF and CTS consolidated feeds, publish both the share count and the trade count for every market participant every month. That second column is the one almost nobody uses, and it is where the retail story lives.
Axis Intelligence Research computed the consolidated totals for every month of 2025 and 2026 through August. Share volume in 2026 has been flat to lower against a strong 2025. Trade count has risen in every year-over-year comparison.
US Consolidated Equity Volume and Trade Count by Month
| Month | Total shares | Total trades | Average shares per trade | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08 | 343,918,898,284 | 2,707,162,174 | 127.04 | Cboe |
| 2026-07 | 383,603,194,993 | 2,995,573,071 | 128.06 | Cboe |
| 2026-06 | 491,032,935,126 | 3,318,533,354 | 147.97 | Cboe |
| 2026-05 | 387,960,449,489 | 2,902,046,738 | 133.69 | Cboe |
| 2026-04 | 374,114,621,866 | 2,680,001,203 | 139.59 | Cboe |
| 2026-03 | 450,357,230,019 | 3,134,973,893 | 143.66 | Cboe |
| 2026-02 | 379,971,539,475 | 2,745,297,108 | 138.41 | Cboe |
| 2026-01 | 388,727,840,475 | 2,651,315,821 | 146.62 | Cboe |
| 2025-08 | 343,982,834,204 | 2,216,302,118 | 155.21 | Cboe |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Cboe Exchange, Inc. historical monthly market volume files for 2025 and 2026, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Hold August 2026 against August 2025 and the comparison is almost clinical. Share volume moved 0.02%. Trade count moved 22.15%. The average print across the entire US equity market fell from 155.21 shares to 127.04 shares, a decline of 18.14% in one year.
Sarah Davis, Digital Finance and Fintech: Share volume is the number every desk quotes and the least informative one on the tape. Volume tells you how much stock moved. Trade count tells you how many separate decisions moved it. When those two series diverge by twenty-two points in twelve months, the composition of the flow has changed, not its size. Something is arriving in smaller tickets, and institutional algorithms slicing a parent order do not explain a shift this concentrated on the off-exchange side, because they slice on both sides.
What Share of US Equity Trading Happens Off-Exchange in 2026?
Off-exchange volume is reported through the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret, FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago, and FINRA/NYSE TRF facilities. It contains two very different populations: alternative trading systems, where institutional block and midpoint flow crosses, and non-ATS over-the-counter volume, which is overwhelmingly wholesale market makers internalizing marketable retail orders. The tape does not separate them in real time, and FINRA publishes the ATS and non-ATS split on a delayed basis rather than alongside the print.
By share volume, the off-exchange proportion has been stable for two years around the half-way mark. By trade count, it has broken out.
Off-Exchange Share of US Consolidated Equity Activity
| Month | Off-exchange share of volume (%) | Off-exchange share of trades (%) | Average off-exchange print (shares) | Average on-exchange print (shares) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08 | 50.55 | 45.79 | 140.24 | 115.89 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-07 | 50.16 | 45.91 | 139.92 | 117.99 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-06 | 48.89 | 44.53 | 162.48 | 136.32 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-05 | 48.73 | 44.02 | 147.99 | 122.44 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-04 | 48.86 | 43.54 | 156.66 | 126.44 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-03 | 46.54 | 40.10 | 166.72 | 128.21 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-02 | 47.85 | 40.82 | 162.25 | 121.96 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2026-01 | 49.79 | 42.24 | 172.81 | 127.46 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2025-12 | 50.24 | 42.60 | 174.05 | 127.96 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2025-11 | 49.61 | 40.02 | 179.60 | 121.73 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2025-10 | 52.27 | 39.74 | 211.97 | 127.66 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2025-09 | 50.97 | 39.78 | 202.82 | 128.89 | Axis Intelligence Research |
| 2025-08 | 50.69 | 41.37 | 190.15 | 130.55 | Axis Intelligence Research |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Cboe Exchange, Inc. historical monthly market volume files, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Read the two percentage columns together. Off-exchange volume share sat at 50.55% in August 2026 and 50.69% in August 2025, a difference of 14 basis points that means nothing. Off-exchange trade-count share went from 41.37% to 45.79%, a gain of 442 basis points that means everything. Wholesalers and dark venues are not taking a larger slice of the stock. They are taking a much larger slice of the tickets.
Across the full year 2025, off-exchange venues handled 50.61% of consolidated share volume at an average print of 200.5 shares. Across January to August 2026, they handled 48.85% at an average print of 155.8 shares.
The Retail Order Size Index: Measuring How Retail-Shaped the Tape Has Become
Raw average trade size is contaminated by the market environment. In a high-volatility month, every execution gets smaller, on-exchange and off-exchange alike, so a falling off-exchange print proves nothing on its own. The comparison has to be relative.
Retail Order Size Index (ROSI) measures how closely the average off-exchange execution has converged on the average exchange execution. Because marketable retail orders are the smallest resting demand in the market and are routed almost entirely to off-exchange internalizers, a rising ROSI is the structural signature of retail-sized flow taking a larger share of off-exchange prints.
- Formula: ROSI = (consolidated on-exchange shares divided by consolidated on-exchange trade count) divided by (off-exchange shares divided by off-exchange trade count), multiplied by 100.
- Reading of 100 means the average off-exchange execution is exactly the size of the average exchange execution. Readings below 100 mean off-exchange prints are larger. A rising series means they are converging downward.
- Inputs: Cboe historical monthly market volume files, which publish total shares and total trade count for every US exchange and every FINRA trade reporting facility, sourced from the UTDF and CTS consolidated feeds. Off-exchange is defined as the sum of FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret, FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago, and FINRA/NYSE TRF. On-exchange is every other reporting market participant.
- Scope: off-exchange prints combine ATS and non-ATS volume, which the consolidated feed does not separate, so ROSI measures the aggregate off-exchange population rather than wholesaler flow in isolation.
ROSI Readings, September 2025 to August 2026
| Month | ROSI | Month | ROSI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-09 | 63.5 | 2026-03 | 76.9 |
| 2025-10 | 60.2 | 2026-04 | 80.7 |
| 2025-11 | 67.8 | 2026-05 | 82.7 |
| 2025-12 | 73.5 | 2026-06 | 83.9 |
| 2026-01 | 73.8 | 2026-07 | 84.3 |
| 2026-02 | 75.2 | 2026-08 | 82.6 |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Cboe Exchange, Inc. historical monthly market volume files. Baseline series. Retrieved September 7, 2026.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, ROSI rose from a low of 60.2 in October 2025 to 84.3 in July 2026, the highest reading in the series, and settled at 82.6 in August 2026. Aggregated across the whole of 2025 the index reads 67.6. Aggregated across January to August 2026 it reads 80.2. In under a year, the average off-exchange execution went from being roughly one and a half times the size of the average exchange execution to being roughly one and a fifth times its size.
Sarah Davis: The index is doing one useful thing: it strips out the market. If volatility compresses every ticket in the market, both halves of the ratio move and the index barely twitches. What moves ROSI is one side shrinking faster than the other, and only the off-exchange side has been shrinking faster, for ten of the last eleven months. That is not a volatility story. That is a composition story, and the composition of off-exchange flow is retail before it is anything else.
Why Did the Average Off-Exchange Print Shrink 26% in a Year?
Two things happened to the plumbing in 2026, and both push in the same direction.
The first is fractional shares. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s compliance-date extension release, FINRA stated that its trade reporting facilities and the exclusive securities information processors would begin reporting and disseminating fractional share transaction quantities on February 23, 2026. Fractional executions are almost entirely retail, almost entirely off-exchange, and by definition smaller than one share. Once they appear in the reported quantity, they pull the average off-exchange print down mechanically.
The timing fits. The off-exchange average print was 172.81 shares in January 2026, before the change. It has fallen in five of the six months since, reaching 139.92 shares in July and 140.24 shares in August. Axis Intelligence Research does not attribute the entire decline to fractional reporting, because the series had already turned in November 2025, three months earlier. What the February 2026 date does is mark the point after which a portion of the decline is a reporting change rather than a behavioral one, and any analyst quoting off-exchange print sizes across that boundary needs to say so.
The second is the tick size and round lot regime. The same SEC release states that the round lot definition and round lot indicator compliance date was the first business day of November 2025, and that the securities information processors began collecting, consolidating, and disseminating odd-lot information from the first business day of May 2026. Both changes make small orders more visible and more executable at displayed prices. The November 2025 date is exactly where the off-exchange print size series turns.
The 2026 Market Structure Timeline That Reshaped the Tape
| Date | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|
| First business day of November 2025 | Round lot definition and round lot indicator compliance date | SEC, Release 34-104147 |
| 2026-02-23 | FINRA TRFs and SIPs begin disseminating fractional share transaction quantities | SEC, Release 34-104147, citing FINRA technical notice |
| First business day of May 2026 | SIPs begin collecting and disseminating odd-lot information | SEC, Release 34-104147 |
| 2026-08-01 | Amended Rule 605 compliance date; reporting entities begin collecting execution quality data | SEC, Release 34-104147 |
| 2026-09-30 | Deadline for reporting entities to publish August 2026 Rule 605 reports | SEC, Release 34-104147 |
| 2026-11 | Price improvement statistics relative to the best available displayed price become required | SEC, Release 34-104147 |
Source: US Securities and Exchange Commission, Extension of Compliance Date for Disclosure of Order Execution Information, 90 FR 47552, published October 2, 2025, retrieved September 7, 2026.
That last row is the one to diary. The amended Rule 605 regime expands execution quality reporting to larger broker-dealers and single dealer platforms, adds fractional share and odd-lot order size categories, and requires a public summary report. August 2026 is the first month of collected data. The reports covering it are due by the end of September 2026. For the first time, the size distribution of retail orders and the price improvement they receive will be public at broker level rather than inferred from tape arithmetic.
How Many Trades Are Retail Brokerage Clients Actually Placing?
Two listed brokers publish monthly order counts, which makes them the cleanest public read on retail activity levels.
Schwab reported client daily average trades of 11.6 million for July 2026 against 7.252 million in July 2025, a 61% increase, alongside 417,000 new brokerage accounts and 39.94 million active brokerage accounts at month end. Derivative trades were 20.6% of the total. Client margin loan balances finished July at $169.9 billion, 92% above July 2025. Trading peaked in June 2026 at 13.615 million daily average trades.
Schwab Client Trading Activity, Selected Months
| Month | Daily average trades (thousands) | Trading days | Derivative trades (% of total) | New brokerage accounts (thousands) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07 | 11,648 | 22.0 | 20.6 | 417 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-06 | 13,615 | 21.0 | 17.7 | 490 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-05 | 11,813 | 20.0 | 19.8 | 461 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-04 | 10,328 | 21.0 | 21.4 | 437 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-03 | 10,232 | 22.0 | 20.4 | 428 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-02 | 9,922 | 19.0 | 20.1 | 395 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2026-01 | 9,512 | 20.0 | 20.1 | 476 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2025-08 | 7,182 | 21.0 | 22.5 | 382 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| 2025-07 | 7,252 | 21.5 | 21.3 | 377 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
Source: The Charles Schwab Corporation, Monthly Activity Report for July 2026, published August 14, 2026, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Multiply the two left-hand columns and July 2026 produces 256.256 million Schwab client trades in a single month, against 155.918 million in July 2025, a rise of 64.4%. Strip out the 20.6% that were derivative trades and 203.47 million non-derivative client trades remain.
Axis Intelligence Research estimates that Schwab clients alone accounted for at least 6.79% of the 2,995,573,071 trades printed to the US consolidated tape in July 2026. The word “estimates” and the words “at least” both carry weight. Schwab counts client trades; the tape counts executions, and a single client order can produce several prints when it is worked across venues or split by an internalizer. Under that arithmetic the true print share is higher, not lower. The figure is also a floor because non-derivative Schwab trades include mutual funds and fixed income, which do not print to the equity tape at all, pushing in the other direction. Both effects are disclosed here rather than netted, because a single tidy percentage would be a false precision.
Interactive Brokers Electronic Brokerage Metrics, August 2026
| Metric | August 2026 | Change vs August 2025 | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily average revenue trades | 4.276 million | +23% | Interactive Brokers |
| Client accounts | 5.460 million | +35% | Interactive Brokers |
| Client equity | $962.8 billion | +35% | Interactive Brokers |
| Client margin loan balances | $101.5 billion | +41% | Interactive Brokers |
| Annualized cleared DARTs per account | 168 | Not stated | Interactive Brokers |
| Average commission per cleared commissionable order | $2.52 | Not stated | Interactive Brokers |
Source: Interactive Brokers Group, Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for August 2026, published September 1, 2026, retrieved September 7, 2026.
Sarah Davis: Look at what grew and what did not at Interactive Brokers. Accounts rose 35%, client equity rose 35%, margin balances rose 41%, and trades rose 23%. Per-account activity is falling even as the account base compounds. That is what a broker looks like when it is recruiting funded investors faster than it is recruiting traders, and it is the opposite of the 2021 pattern, where trade counts outran everything. The retail base of 2026 is wider and calmer than the one that made the headlines five years ago, which is also why the tickets are small.
What Does a Retail Trade Cost to Execute in 2026?
Interactive Brokers publishes something no other broker does: a monthly all-in execution cost for its clients measured against a daily volume-weighted average price benchmark. In August 2026 the total cost of executing and clearing US Reg-NMS stocks for IBKR PRO clients was about 2.1 basis points of trade money, against 2.5 basis points for the rolling twelve months. The monthly series ran from a low of 1.3 basis points in February 2026 to a high of 4.0 basis points in July 2026, split between roughly 0.8 basis points of commissions and fees and a swinging execution cost component.
Order size is where the retail and professional populations diverge sharply. Interactive Brokers reported an average stock order of 626 shares in August 2026 and an average US Reg-NMS stock trade of $22,288. Its own detailed Reg-NMS table for the same month shows 27.57 million orders against 10,363 million shares, which works out to 375.9 shares per order. Axis Intelligence Research publishes both figures side by side rather than reconciling them, because they describe different populations: the 626-share figure covers the firm’s stock order flow, while the detailed table covers IBKR PRO Reg-NMS activity only. The $22,288 average trade value reconciles exactly against the detailed table, at $614,490 million of trade money divided by 27.57 million orders.
Set the professional number against the tape. The average off-exchange print in August 2026 was 140.24 shares. An IBKR client stock order averaged 626 shares. The gap is the distance between a self-directed order and the retail flow that dominates internalized volume, and it is roughly four and a half times.
What the 2026 Trading Data Says About Retail Market Share
Put the sources in one frame. Share volume is flat. Trade count is up 22%. Off-exchange venues hold half the volume and are taking a rapidly rising share of the tickets. The average off-exchange execution has shrunk by a quarter in a year. The two listed retail brokers that publish monthly order counts are up 61% and 23% year over year respectively, with account growth outpacing trade growth at the professional-leaning one.
The picture is a market where retail participation is expressed in more, smaller decisions rather than in more capital. That is consistent with what the ownership and balance-sheet data show elsewhere: our analysis of retail investor statistics found household equity wealth concentrating rather than broadening, and our ETF statistics analysis found fund assets and fund counts expanding faster than the investor base. Trading activity is the third leg of the same structure. More tickets, similar dollars, fewer new owners.
According to Axis Intelligence Research, the single most useful forward indicator in this dataset is the gap between off-exchange volume share and off-exchange trade share. In August 2025 that gap was 9.32 percentage points. In August 2026 it was 4.76. If it keeps closing, the off-exchange venue population is converging on exchange-sized executions, and the historical premise that off-exchange means large is finished.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure on this page was retrieved from a primary publisher on September 7, 2026 and logged with its source URL and retrieval date in the accompanying CSV. Sources used: Cboe Exchange, Inc. historical monthly market volume files for 2025 and 2026, built from the UTDF and CTS consolidated data feeds; The Charles Schwab Corporation Monthly Activity Report for July 2026; Interactive Brokers Group Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for August 2026; the US Securities and Exchange Commission compliance-date extension release at 90 FR 47552; and the SEC press release announcing the 2024 Rule 605 amendments. No figure on this page is sourced from a secondary aggregator, and no figure is sourced from model memory.
Consolidated aggregation. Cboe publishes one row per market participant per month. Axis Intelligence Research summed the Total Shares and Total Trade Count columns across all listed participants to produce consolidated monthly totals, then split them into an off-exchange group (FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret, FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago, FINRA/NYSE TRF) and an on-exchange group (all remaining participants, including venues that began reporting during the period such as 24X National Exchange, NYSE Texas, NASDAQ Texas, and Texas Stock Exchange). Venue entries and exits within the period affect the on-exchange composition but not the off-exchange totals.
ROSI formula. ROSI = ((on-exchange shares / on-exchange trade count) / (off-exchange shares / off-exchange trade count)) x 100. A reading of 100 indicates parity in average execution size. Monthly readings are computed independently; period readings for 2025 and January to August 2026 are computed on summed period totals rather than as averages of monthly readings, so they are volume-weighted.
Scope of the index. Off-exchange totals combine alternative trading system volume with non-ATS over-the-counter volume, which the consolidated feed does not separate at print time. FINRA publishes that split on a delayed basis. ROSI therefore measures the aggregate off-exchange population, and a rising reading is consistent with, but not proof of, a rising retail proportion. Reported off-exchange quantities also began including fractional share transaction quantities on February 23, 2026, which mechanically reduces the average off-exchange print from that date forward. Readings before and after that date are not exactly like for like, and this page states the boundary rather than smoothing it.
Declined calculation. Axis Intelligence Research attempted a direct retail percentage of US equity trading volume by combining Schwab and Interactive Brokers monthly trade counts with the consolidated tape trade count. That figure is not published here. Schwab reports client trades and Interactive Brokers reports customer orders divided by trading days, and neither maps one to one onto tape executions, so the resulting percentage would be an artifact of three incompatible counting conventions. The Schwab floor estimate above is published instead, with its direction of bias stated in both directions. This declined calculation is recorded in the CSV as a retracted row.
Timing. Cboe publishes the monthly market volume file after month end, which is why August 2026 is the most recent complete month. Schwab publishes its Monthly Activity Report in the middle of the following month, so July 2026 is its most recent published month as of this update. Interactive Brokers publishes on the first business day of the following month, so August 2026 is available. The next amended Rule 605 reports are due by September 30, 2026.
About This Dataset
Contents. 326 rows covering US consolidated equity share volume and trade count, off-exchange and on-exchange splits, average execution sizes, Retail Order Size Index readings, retail brokerage trading activity, execution cost measures, and market structure compliance dates, spanning January 2025 through August 2026, with source organization, source document, URL, retrieval date, primary-source flag, Axis-calculated flag, and method note on every row.
License. CC BY 4.0. The dataset may be reused, redistributed, and built upon with attribution.
Citation format: Axis Intelligence Research, Retail Trading Statistics 2026, 2026.
Cite This Research
APA: Axis Intelligence Research. (2026). Retail trading statistics 2026: Volume, off-exchange share, and the shrinking retail print. https://axis-intelligence.com/retail-trading-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research. “Retail Trading Statistics 2026: Volume, Off-Exchange Share, and the Shrinking Retail Print.” Axis Intelligence, 7 Sept. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/retail-trading-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research. “Retail Trading Statistics 2026: Volume, Off-Exchange Share, and the Shrinking Retail Print.” Axis Intelligence, September 7, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/retail-trading-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
What percentage of US stock trading volume is retail in 2026?
No exchange, clearing house, or regulator publishes a retail flag on executed volume, so any single percentage is a vendor model rather than a measured figure. What the consolidated tape supports is a structural read: off-exchange venues executed 50.55% of US equity share volume and 45.79% of all trades in August 2026, and off-exchange is where marketable retail orders are internalized. The trade-count share is the number that has moved, rising 442 basis points in twelve months.
Why does off-exchange trading hold half of US equity volume but less than half of trades?
Because off-exchange prints have historically been larger. The category contains institutional block and midpoint crossing on alternative trading systems as well as internalized retail orders, and the block side pulls the average size up. In August 2025 the average off-exchange execution was 190.15 shares against 130.55 on-exchange. By August 2026 that had narrowed to 140.24 against 115.89, which is why the two share figures are converging.
Does the Retail Order Size Index prove retail flow is growing?
It measures convergence in execution size, which is consistent with a rising retail proportion of off-exchange prints but does not isolate it. ROSI rose from 60.2 in October 2025 to 82.6 in August 2026. Part of that movement is behavioral and part is a reporting change, because FINRA trade reporting facilities began disseminating fractional share transaction quantities on February 23, 2026. Anyone using the index across that date should treat it as two linked segments.
Do fractional share trades appear in US consolidated volume data?
Fractional share transaction quantities began being reported and disseminated by FINRA trade reporting facilities and the securities information processors on February 23, 2026, according to the SEC’s compliance-date extension release. Before that date, fractional executions were reported without the fractional quantity, so the average off-exchange print size for periods before and after February 2026 is not measured on an identical basis.
How many trades do retail brokerage clients place per month?
Schwab clients placed 11.6 million trades per trading day in July 2026, which across 22 trading days is 256.256 million trades in the month, of which 20.6% were derivative trades. Interactive Brokers cleared 4.276 million daily average revenue trades in August 2026 across 5.460 million client accounts, an annualized 168 cleared trades per account. Both figures count client orders, not tape executions.
What does amended Rule 605 change for retail execution quality data in 2026?
The compliance date was August 1, 2026, so August is the first month of collected data, and reporting entities must publish those reports by the end of September 2026. The amendments extend reporting to larger broker-dealers and single dealer platforms, add fractional share and odd-lot order size categories, and require a public summary report. Price improvement statistics relative to the best available displayed price become required in November 2026.
Is US equity trading volume growing in 2026?
Not in shares. The consolidated tape carried 343,918,898,284 shares in August 2026 against 343,982,834,204 in August 2025, a change of 0.02%. Trade count rose 22.15% over the same comparison, from 2,216,302,118 to 2,707,162,174. Activity is growing; the quantity of stock changing hands is not.
Why do broker trade counts not add up to consolidated tape trade counts?
Three counting conventions collide. Schwab counts client trades, Interactive Brokers counts customer orders divided by trading days, and the consolidated tape counts executions reported by market centers and trade reporting facilities. One client order can generate several tape prints, and broker trade counts include products that never print to the equity tape. Axis Intelligence Research publishes a floor estimate for Schwab’s July 2026 contribution rather than a precise share, and states the bias in both directions.
Chart specifications
- US consolidated equity share volume versus trade count, monthly, January 2025 to August 2026, dual axis. Source: Axis Intelligence Research from Cboe.
- Off-exchange share of volume versus off-exchange share of trades, monthly, with the converging gap shaded. Source: Axis Intelligence Research from Cboe.
- Average execution size, off-exchange versus on-exchange, monthly. Source: Axis Intelligence Research from Cboe.
- Retail Order Size Index, monthly readings September 2025 to August 2026, with the February 23, 2026 fractional reporting boundary marked. Source: Axis Intelligence Research from Cboe.
- Schwab client daily average trades by month, July 2025 to July 2026. Source: Schwab Monthly Activity Report.
- Interactive Brokers all-in Reg-NMS stock trading expense in basis points, September 2025 to August 2026. Source: Interactive Brokers.