Charles Schwab Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Sarah Davis | Last updated: August 20, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Charles Schwab closed July 2026 with $13.04 trillion in total client assets across 39.9 million active brokerage accounts — but the number that moved was borrowing. Client margin balances hit $169.9 billion, up 92% year over year, and Axis Intelligence Research finds Schwab now carries 12.0% of every dollar of margin debt in the U.S. brokerage system.
Quick Answer
The Charles Schwab Corporation held $13.04 trillion in total client assets as of July 31, 2026, across 39.9 million active brokerage accounts, 5.9 million workplace plan participant accounts and 2.4 million banking accounts. Second-quarter 2026 net revenues reached a record $7.07 billion, up 21% year over year. Client margin balances stood at $169.9 billion — a 92% year-over-year increase, and 12.0% of all U.S. customer margin debt.
Key Findings
- Axis Intelligence Research finds that Charles Schwab’s share of all U.S. customer margin debit balances rose from 8.6% in July 2025 to 12.0% in July 2026 — a 3.35-percentage-point gain in twelve months, calculated from Schwab’s reported margin balances against FINRA’s Rule 4521 aggregate.
- Axis Intelligence Research finds Schwab clients now borrow $1.30 for every $100 of assets they custody at the firm, up from $0.81 twelve months earlier — the firm’s Margin Leverage Intensity, which Axis Intelligence Research tracks monthly.
- According to Schwab’s July 2026 Monthly Activity Report, total client assets equaled $13.04 trillion, up 19% from July 2025, with core net new assets of $58.1 billion in the month — a July record.
- Axis Intelligence Research estimates Schwab executed approximately 256.3 million client trades in July 2026, derived from 11.648 million daily average trades across 22.0 trading days.
- The Axis Client Leverage & Engagement Index (CLEI) reads 146.8 as of July 31, 2026, against a July 2025 baseline of 100 — meaning Schwab’s retail client base is running roughly 47% hotter on leverage and trading activity than it was a year ago.
How Much Money Does Charles Schwab Manage in 2026?
Schwab reported $13.04 trillion in total client assets at July month-end, per its July 2026 Monthly Activity Report. That is up 19% from $10.96 trillion in July 2025, and effectively flat against June’s $13.08 trillion — a $42.4 billion month-over-month decline driven entirely by $102.5 billion of net market losses, offset by $60.1 billion of net new assets.
The distinction matters, and it is the one most coverage collapses. Asset growth at a custodian has two engines: markets and gathering. In July 2026 the market engine ran backwards and the gathering engine ran at a July record.
Charles Schwab Client Assets by Month
| Month-end | Total client assets ($B) | Core net new assets ($B) | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 10,963.5 | 46.9 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Oct 2025 | 11,828.0 | 44.4 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Dec 2025 | 11,903.0 | 79.1 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Mar 2026 | 11,767.9 | 79.7 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Apr 2026 | 12,605.3 | 7.2 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| May 2026 | 13,135.3 | 49.9 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Jun 2026 | 13,084.9 | 62.7 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Jul 2026 | 13,042.5 | 58.1 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
April’s $7.2 billion core figure is not a collapse in demand — it is tax season. Client disbursements to the IRS run through the same pipe as outflows, and Schwab flags it every year.
Assets Receiving Ongoing Advisory Services
Advisory assets — the balances that carry an ongoing fee rather than a transaction — totaled $6.70 trillion at July month-end, up 21.5% year over year. Axis Intelligence Research computes that total as the sum of the two segments Schwab reports separately: $933.7 billion in Investor Services and $5,763.1 billion in Advisor Services.
| Segment | Jul 2025 ($B) | Jul 2026 ($B) | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Investor Services advisory | 747.9 | 933.7 | +24.8% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Advisor Services | 4,765.1 | 5,763.1 | +20.9% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Total advisory assets | 5,513.0 | 6,696.8 | +21.5% | Axis Intelligence Research (sum) |
Sarah Davis: The advisory number is the take-rate story hiding inside the asset number. Schwab’s Q2 2026 disclosure puts the average fee on fee-based managed investing solutions at 0.37%, down from 0.40% a year earlier. Three basis points of fee compression on a book that grew 21% still nets out positive — but it tells you the direction of travel. Custody scale is what pays for the discount, and Schwab has more of it than anyone.
How Many Customers Does Charles Schwab Have?
Schwab reported 48.0 million total client accounts as of June 30, 2026, spanning brokerage, banking and workplace plans. The July detail:
| Account type | Jul 2025 (000s) | Jul 2026 (000s) | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Active brokerage accounts | 37,658 | 39,940 | +6.1% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Banking accounts | 2,116 | 2,381 | +12.5% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Workplace plan participant accounts | 5,619 | 5,915 | +5.3% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| New brokerage accounts opened (month) | 377 | 417 | +10.6% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
Note the asymmetry. Brokerage accounts grew 6.1%; banking accounts grew twice as fast. Schwab is converting custody relationships into deposit relationships, and bank loan balances back it up — $67.0 billion at June month-end, up 33% year over year.
Axis Intelligence Research calculates average assets per active brokerage account at $326,552 as of July 31, 2026 ($13,042.5 billion ÷ 39,940 thousand accounts). That figure is the cleanest single separator between Schwab and the app-native brokers, and we return to it below.
Charles Schwab Margin Balances and the Leverage Story
This is the 2026 headline, and almost nobody has framed it against the industry denominator.
Schwab’s client margin balances ended July 2026 at $169.9 billion, up 51% from year-end 2025 and 92% from July 2025. Over the same twelve months, aggregate U.S. customer margin debit balances reported to FINRA under Rule 4521 grew from $1.0225 trillion to $1.4172 trillion — up 38.6%.
Schwab’s margin book grew roughly two and a half times faster than the market it borrows into.
Axis Cross-Source Finding: Schwab’s Share of U.S. Margin Debt
Formula: Schwab client margin balances (converted to $ millions) ÷ FINRA aggregate debit balances in customers’ securities margin accounts × 100.
July 2026: ($169.9B × 1,000) ÷ $1,417,225M × 100 = 11.988% July 2025: ($88.3B × 1,000) ÷ $1,022,548M × 100 = 8.635%
| Month-end | Schwab margin ($B) | FINRA U.S. total ($M) | Schwab share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 88.3 | 1,022,548 | 8.64% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
| Dec 2025 | 112.3 | 1,225,597 | 9.16% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
| Mar 2026 | 126.7 | 1,220,922 | 10.38% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
| May 2026 | 154.6 | 1,415,557 | 10.92% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
| Jun 2026 | 165.1 | 1,502,072 | 10.99% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
| Jul 2026 | 169.9 | 1,417,225 | 11.99% | Schwab MAR / FINRA |
July is the tell. Industry-wide margin debt fell 5.6% month over month as the S&P 500 slipped from 7,580 to 7,499 and the Nasdaq Composite gave back 3%. Schwab’s book rose 2.9% anyway. When the tide goes out and one firm’s balance still climbs, that is share, not beta.
Sarah Davis: Margin lending is the highest-yielding asset on a broker’s balance sheet, and Schwab’s Q2 disclosure shows receivables from brokerage clients earning 5.68% while the deposits funding much of the book cost 0.19%. That is a 549-basis-point spread. It is also where the risk lives: a margin book is a loan portfolio collateralized by the exact asset class whose decline would trigger the calls. Schwab discloses that $46.2 billion of the July balance sits in RIA long/short strategies from which it earns a fixed net yield — structurally safer than directional retail leverage, and a meaningful share of the growth. Read the 92% with that composition in hand. The SEC’s investor bulletin on margin accounts remains the clearest public statement of what the other side of that spread costs a household.
The Axis Client Leverage & Engagement Index (CLEI)
CLEI stands for Client Leverage & Engagement Index. Axis Intelligence Research built it to answer a question Schwab’s disclosures raise but do not answer: is the retail client base actually behaving differently, or is it just bigger?
Components and Weights
| Component | Definition | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Margin Leverage Intensity (MLI) | Client margin balances ÷ total client assets × 100 | 40% |
| Trading Intensity (TI) | Daily average trades ÷ active brokerage accounts × 1,000 | 40% |
| Cash Defensiveness (inverse) | Baseline client-cash share ÷ current client-cash share | 20% |
Formula: CLEI = 100 × [0.40 × (MLI_t / MLI_base) + 0.40 × (TI_t / TI_base) + 0.20 × (cash_base / cash_t)] Baseline: July 31, 2025 = 100. All three inputs come from Schwab’s Monthly Activity Report.
Worked example, July 2026: MLI = 1.303% (vs 0.805% base, ratio 1.6175). TI = 291.6 trades per 1,000 accounts per day (vs 192.6, ratio 1.5144). Cash = 9.0% (vs 9.7%, ratio 1.0778). CLEI = 100 × [(0.40 × 1.6175) + (0.40 × 1.5144) + (0.20 × 1.0778)] = 146.8
CLEI Readings
| Month-end | MLI (%) | TI (per 1,000 accts/day) | Client cash (%) | CLEI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 0.805 | 192.6 | 9.7 | 100.0 (baseline) |
| Oct 2025 | 0.893 | 225.9 | 9.3 | 112.1 |
| Dec 2025 | 0.943 | 201.2 | 9.7 | 108.6 |
| Feb 2026 | 0.987 | 254.9 | 9.3 | 122.8 |
| Mar 2026 | 1.077 | 261.7 | 9.9 | 127.4 |
| May 2026 | 1.177 | 298.8 | 8.9 | 142.3 |
| Jun 2026 | 1.262 | 342.1 | 9.0 | 155.3 |
| Jul 2026 | 1.303 | 291.6 | 9.0 | 146.8 |
Source: Axis Intelligence Research, computed from Schwab Monthly Activity Report inputs.
The June reading of 155.3 is the high of the series. July’s pullback to 146.8 came almost entirely from trading — daily average trades fell 14% month over month — while leverage kept climbing. That divergence is the useful signal: clients stopped trading as much but did not deleverage. Positions were held on borrowed money rather than churned.
What would reverse it: a sustained equity drawdown that forces margin reduction, or a cash reallocation that pushes client cash back above 9.7%. Neither appeared in the July data.
Scope of the index: CLEI measures behavior at Schwab specifically, not the U.S. retail investor in aggregate. Schwab’s margin figure includes RIA long/short balances, so the leverage component reflects institutional-style strategies alongside retail borrowing. The index carries no market-return component by design — it is built to isolate client behavior from index performance.
Charles Schwab Revenue and Financial Statistics 2026
Second-quarter 2026 was a record quarter on every headline line.
| Metric | Q2 2026 | Q2 2025 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net revenues | $7,072M | $5,851M | +21% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Net interest revenue | $3,357M | $2,822M | +19% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Asset management & administration fees | $1,825M | $1,570M | +16% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Trading revenue | $1,215M | $952M | +28% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Bank deposit account fees | $333M | $247M | +35% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Net income (GAAP) | $2,800M | $2,126M | +32% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Diluted EPS (GAAP) | $1.54 | $1.08 | +43% | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Pre-tax profit margin (GAAP) | 51.9% | 47.9% | +4.0 pts | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
| Net interest margin | 3.00% | 2.66% | +34 bp | Schwab Q2 2026 earnings release |
Full-year 2025, for the annual baseline: net revenues of $23.921 billion, net income of $8.852 billion, diluted EPS of $4.65, and core net new assets of $519.4 billion at a 5.1% organic growth rate. Schwab repurchased $7.3 billion of common stock during 2025. Filings are on file with the SEC’s EDGAR system under CIK 0000316709.
Axis Cross-Source Metric: Client Asset Revenue Take
How much revenue does Schwab extract per dollar it custodies? Schwab does not publish this. Axis Intelligence Research computes it.
Formula: (quarterly net revenues × 4) ÷ average client assets × 10,000, expressed in basis points. Inputs: Q2 2026 net revenues $7,072M; average client assets = ($11,767.9B + $13,084.9B) ÷ 2 = $12,426.4B. Result: $28,288M ÷ $12,426,400M × 10,000 = 22.76 basis points.
Validation: running the same denominator against Q2 total expenses excluding interest ($3,403M) yields 10.95 bp, which reconciles to Schwab’s own disclosed “expenses excluding interest as a percentage of average client assets (annualized)” of 0.11%. The denominator checks out against the company’s arithmetic.
So Schwab earns roughly 23 cents per year on every $100 it holds, and spends 11 of them. Revenue per trade, meanwhile, fell to $1.64 in Q2 2026 from $2.03 a year earlier — a 19% decline. Volume is carrying trading revenue, not price.
Sarah Davis: Twenty-three basis points is a custodian’s number, not an asset manager’s. It is the arithmetic of the discount model: Schwab wins on the denominator, and every basis point of fee compression it absorbs makes the next competitor’s entry harder. The interesting pressure is that revenue per trade is falling while trading revenue is up 28% — Schwab is being paid less per interaction and more times. That works beautifully in a high-engagement market and inverts fast in a quiet one.
Charles Schwab vs Interactive Brokers vs Robinhood
Three brokers, three different businesses, one comparable month where the data exists.
| Metric | Charles Schwab | Interactive Brokers | Robinhood | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client assets | $13,042.5B (Jul 2026) | $906.7B (Jul 2026) | $369B (Jun 2026) | Company reports |
| Client accounts | 39.94M active brokerage | 5.317M | 28.4M funded customers | Company reports |
| Margin / debit balances | $169.9B (Jul 2026) | $100.7B (Jul 2026) | $21.6B (Jun 2026) | Company reports |
| Daily average trades | 11.648M (Jul 2026) | 4.426M DARTs (Jul 2026) | Not disclosed monthly | Company reports |
| Margin YoY growth | +92% | +49% | +127% | Company reports |
The account definitions are not identical — Schwab counts active brokerage accounts, Interactive Brokers counts client accounts, Robinhood counts funded customers — so the account row is directional, not a like-for-like ranking. Assets and margin balances are comparable.
Axis Intelligence Research computes average assets per relationship at $326,552 for Schwab, $170,528 for Interactive Brokers ($906.7B ÷ 5.317M), and $12,993 for Robinhood ($369B ÷ 28.4M). Schwab custodies roughly 25 times more per relationship than Robinhood does.
Combined, the three firms account for $292.2 billion of the $1.417 trillion U.S. margin aggregate on Axis Intelligence Research’s calculation — though Interactive Brokers and Robinhood report global balances against a U.S.-only FINRA denominator, which is why we publish the Schwab share alone as the defensible figure rather than merging all three into one ratio.
Charles Schwab Trading Statistics 2026
| Metric | Jul 2025 | Jul 2026 | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client daily average trades (000s) | 7,252 | 11,648 | +61% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Trading days in month | 21.5 | 22.0 | +0.5 | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Derivative trades, share of total | 21.3% | 20.6% | −70 bp | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Schwab Trading Activity Index (STAX) | 41.8 | 59.8 | +43% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Transactional sweep cash ($B) | 407.5 | 476.8 | +17% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Net ETF buys, month ($B) | 25.8 | 36.3 | +41% | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
| Net mutual fund buys, month ($B) | −3.4 | −6.0 | wider outflow | Schwab Monthly Activity Report |
Two facts sit next to each other here. Clients bought a net $36.3 billion of ETFs in July 2026 and sold a net $6.0 billion of mutual funds. That has been true every single month in this thirteen-month series without exception — thirteen consecutive months of net mutual fund selling against net ETF buying at the largest retail custodian in the country. Schwab’s ETF assets reached $3,543.4 billion at June 30 against $3,187.7 billion in mutual funds; the crossover has already happened.
Axis Intelligence Research estimates 256.3 million total client trades in July 2026 (11.648 million DATs × 22.0 trading days), against 155.9 million in July 2025.
Methodology
Collection. Every figure was pulled from documents fetched during production on August 19, 2026. Schwab’s monthly operating data comes from the July 2026 Monthly Activity Report PDF, which publishes a thirteen-month table — the source of every month-by-month series here. Quarterly financials come from the Q2 2026 and Q4 2025 earnings releases. Industry margin aggregates come from FINRA’s Margin Statistics page, published under Rule 4521 on a settlement-date basis. Competitor figures come from Interactive Brokers’ July 2026 brokerage metrics release and Robinhood’s Q2 2026 results release. No aggregator or secondary summary supplied a figure in this dataset.
Formulas. Three Axis constructions appear above, each with inputs and arithmetic disclosed inline: Schwab’s share of U.S. margin debt, the Client Leverage & Engagement Index (CLEI), and the Client Asset Revenue Take. All arithmetic was verified twice — once in standard floating-point and once in exact rational arithmetic — and the revenue-take denominator was independently reconciled against Schwab’s own published expense ratio of 0.11% of average client assets.
Scope. Schwab’s reported margin balances include margin loans and short credits from RIA long/short strategies from which the company earns a fixed net yield ($46.2 billion of margin loans in July 2026), so the margin-share metric measures reported balances rather than directional retail borrowing alone. FINRA’s aggregate reflects settlement-date balances across all member firms and may shift as firms revise reporting methods. Robinhood and Interactive Brokers report global balances; Schwab’s business is overwhelmingly U.S. Advisory-asset totals are Axis sums of Schwab’s two reported segments. Monthly market-index values in the Schwab table are month-end closes and are reproduced only as context for asset movement.
Rounding. Percentages are shown to one or two decimals as the underlying precision supports. Index readings are shown to one decimal. Raw unrounded values ship in the CSV.
About This Dataset
Title: Charles Schwab Statistics 2026 — Client Assets, Accounts, Margin and Trading Data
Publisher: Axis Intelligence Research
Coverage: July 2025 – July 2026 (monthly); Q2 2025 – Q2 2026 (quarterly); FY2025 (annual)
Rows: 358 observations, each carrying source organization, source document, source URL and retrieval date
License: CC BY 4.0 — free to reuse with attribution to Axis Intelligence Research
Download: charles-schwab-statistics-2026.csv
Cite This Dataset
APA: Axis Intelligence Research & Davis, S. (2026, August 19). Charles Schwab statistics 2026: Client assets, accounts, margin and trading data. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/charles-schwab-statistics/
MLA: Axis Intelligence Research, and Sarah Davis. “Charles Schwab Statistics 2026: Client Assets, Accounts, Margin and Trading Data.” Axis Intelligence, 19 Aug. 2026, axis-intelligence.com/charles-schwab-statistics/.
Chicago: Axis Intelligence Research and Sarah Davis. “Charles Schwab Statistics 2026: Client Assets, Accounts, Margin and Trading Data.” Axis Intelligence, August 19, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/charles-schwab-statistics/.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Schwab’s $13.04 trillion “assets under management” or “assets under custody”?
Custody, mostly. Schwab reports total client assets — everything held on the platform, including third-party mutual funds and ETFs it does not manage. The genuinely fee-bearing slice is the $6.70 trillion receiving ongoing advisory services, and the fee-based portion of that is smaller still. Anyone citing $13.04 trillion as AUM is comparing a custodian’s balance to an asset manager’s, and the take rates differ by an order of magnitude.
Does the 92% jump in Schwab margin balances signal a retail leverage bubble?
Not on its own, and the composition argues against reading it that way. Schwab discloses that $46.2 billion of the July 2026 balance relates to RIA long/short strategies earning a fixed net yield — hedged institutional positioning, not directional retail borrowing. What is unambiguous is share shift: Schwab’s slice of the U.S. margin aggregate went from 8.6% to 12.0% while the aggregate itself grew 38.6%.
Why did Schwab’s client assets fall in July 2026 if net new assets were a record?
Markets. Total client assets declined $42.4 billion month over month because $102.5 billion of net market losses outweighed $60.1 billion of net new assets. Asset gathering and market performance are separate engines, and July ran them in opposite directions.
How does Schwab make money if trading is free?
Net interest revenue is the largest line — $3,357 million in Q2 2026, versus $1,215 million from trading. Schwab earns the spread between what client cash pays and what its assets yield: brokerage-client receivables returned 5.68% in Q2 while bank deposits cost 0.19%. Sweep cash of $476.8 billion at July month-end is the raw material.
What is transactional sweep cash and why does it matter?
It is uninvested client cash automatically moved into bank deposits and broker-dealer balances — $476.8 billion at July 31, 2026. It matters because it funds the balance sheet cheaply. When clients redeploy it into securities, as they did in July when sweep cash fell $8.9 billion, Schwab’s cheapest funding source shrinks even as trading and margin revenue rise.
Are Schwab clients still buying mutual funds?
Net, no. Across all thirteen months from July 2025 through July 2026, Schwab clients were net sellers of mutual funds every month and net buyers of ETFs every month. July 2026: $6.0 billion of net mutual fund selling against $36.3 billion of net ETF buying.
How does Schwab’s account growth compare with the app-native brokers?
Schwab added 6.1% more active brokerage accounts year over year to 39.94 million. Robinhood grew funded customers 7% to 28.4 million; Interactive Brokers grew client accounts 34% to 5.317 million. The gap is in balance, not count — Axis Intelligence Research calculates $326,552 per Schwab relationship against $12,993 per Robinhood funded customer.
What is STAX and what is it telling us in 2026?
The Schwab Trading Activity Index is Schwab’s own proprietary measure of retail client exposure to equity markets, built from the holdings and transactions of Schwab clients. It read 59.8 in July 2026 against 41.8 in July 2025. It measures positioning; the Axis CLEI measures leverage and turnover — the two answer different questions and are best read side by side.