Trading Activity Falls at Ameritrade, Instinet

Internet brokerage Ameritrade (AMTD) reported a drop in daily average trades and an increase in net new accounts for February, while Instinet (INET), the owner of the electronic trading platform, reported a decline in trading volume for the month.

Ameritrade said Friday that the number of average daily trades placed by clients fell to 88,000 in February, down 7% from January and 23% below the same month last year. Daily average trades at Ameritrade hit a high of 173,000 in March 2000, when the Nasdaq peaked above 5000.

Ameritrade continued to grow its customer accounts last month, however. Investors opened 25,000 new accounts with Ameritrade and closed 10,000 accounts in February, for net new accounts of 15,000.

Instinet traded 4.94 billion U.S. equity shares in February, a 9% decline from January and a 24% drop from the same month a year ago. The latest February included 19 trading days, on par with February of last year and down from January's 21 trading days.

Some 79% of the stocks Instinet traded during February were Nasdaq securities. The rest were exchange-listed.

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