Online Brokerages See August Bounce

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- August turned out to be a busy month for several online trading operations, with the three biggies showing bettering trading results.

According to press releases issued separately late yesterday and today, E*Trade Financial(EFTC Quote), TD Ameritrade(AMTD Quote) and Charles Schwab(SCHW Quote) saw double-digit percentage improvements in daily average trading.

TD Ameritrade averaged 431,000 client trades per day in August, according to a release. That's a 71% boost since the year-ago month and up 16% sequentially. But client assets came to $289.4 billion, which was a 5% slide from last year, though still 3% better than the month prior.

Separately on Tuesday, TD Ameritrade CEO Fred Tomczyk reportedly said the past nine months have been the best in the company's history.

For competitor E*Trade, August was marked by an 18% sequential surge in daily average revenue trades. The online operation said the 208,495 average during the month was also a 37% jump from the year-earlier period average of 151,722. E*Trade said in its press release that it ended August with 2.73 million brokerage accounts, which also included 31,324 in new brokerage accounts and 11,321 in net new brokerage accounts.

In addition, E*Trade ended August with a total of 4.52 million accounts, which was 0.1% better than July and 3.8% compared to last year.

Schwab, likewise, saw an uptick in daily average trades, coming to 334,300 in August. That's a 24% upswing as compared to the year-ago month and 15% better than the prior month. Still, Schwab showed $1.32 trillion in client assets by the end of the month, which was off 6% compared to last year, though slightly up by 3% sequentially.