Schwab Earnings Spotlight the Real Winners of Record Retail Investor Inflows 

Everyday investors aren’t funnelling their savings into meme stocks. Instead, they put a record amount of money into stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) last year. The winners of that trend? Large fund managers, of course. 

Schwab and its rivals like Fidelity Investments and Vanguard may no longer get the trading fees they collected before Robinhood helped usher in the zero-commission era, but apparently, they don’t need them. Schwab’s trading revenue jumped 22% from the fourth quarter of 2024, and its net interest revenue surged 25%. The firm reported $158.2 billion in total new assets for the last quarter of 2025. 

While net revenue of $6.34 billion came in lower than the $6.37 billion analysts were expecting, it’s clear that Schwab is riding the high of the record inflows mom-and-pop investors put to work. 

Forever Young  

Everyday investors closed 2025 with inflows that were nearly twice the five-year average, surpassing the previous record set in 2021 by almost 17% and skyrocketing past 2024’s figure by nearly 60%, JPMorgan analysts wrote in a note earlier this month. 

Massive brokers saw the benefits. Schwab’s daily trading volume rose 31% year-over-year. 

“We’re winning with all demographics,” Rick Wurster, president and CEO of Charles Schwab, told CNBC. “We’ve seen the young generation come to Schwab at record levels and get invested earlier than the prior generations … One-third of our new-to-firm clients last year were Gen Z investors, and the average age of our clients has actually come down by 10 years in the last decade.”  

But to continue attracting those younger investors, they have to be open to changes: 

• A 2024 Bank of America study found that 72% of high-net-worth investors ages 21 to 43 say it’s no longer possible to achieve above-average investment returns by investing solely in traditional stocks and bonds. They’re increasingly turning to alternative assets, such as crypto. Wurster said during the company’s earnings call that it’s on track to launch Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading in the first half of this year.
• Offering access to the increasingly popular prediction markets, however, isn’t high on Schwab’s priority list at the moment. “I think there is a really bright line between gambling and investing,” Wurster told The Wall Street Journal in December. “The blending of those two is not a great thing.”

Financial Ecosystems: As more investors enter the market, they’re looking for advice on how to weather its ups and downs and manage their overall finances. As a result, major brokerages are transforming into financial ecosystems. Just take Robinhood, which grew from a platform for investors to trade stocks and ETFs into one that offers private wealth management, traditional FDIC-insured bank accounts and mortgage lending via partnerships. Meanwhile, Wurster said in a statement that “clients are conducting more of their financial lives at Schwab, with record engagement across wealth management, trading and banking.”