<<<<Thursday August 30 10:45 AM ET Schwab Cutting Up to 2,400 Employees Accounting mirage to test depths of investor credulity - (ON24) By Brian Kelleher NEW YORK (Reuters) - Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE:SCH - news), the top U.S. discount and online brokerage, on Thursday said it was cutting up to 2,400 employees, or 11 percent of its work force, as it continues to grapple with weak customer trading levels.>>>> "Weak Customer Trading Levels!" If it gets any weaker (which it will thanks to SEC ruling) could this be a start of a recession for brokers? Bob
Yoda - just have a look at this : http://www.datek.com/popinframe.html?ref=/bestexecution/index.html&navNumber=3 Datek is friendly enough to publish & update their payment for orderflow, which they rebate to their customers btw. All this data points to a significant decline in trading activity by retail investors / traders since early 2001. As we can see also from the daily trading volumes in NYSE and NASDAQ stocks. Now imagine, what will happen, when the new rule will take effect on Nasdaq trading by end of September.
I wonder if he gave the 2400 employees the "Relax..." speech! LOL. Yikes I've hated that annoying commercial since the first time I saw it. On a side note - spoke to a few folks at CyberTrader today (owned by Schwab), and they said they expect no layoffs as they are already lean 'n mean. Hopefully that's the case but we shall see...
I did a few trades at Schwab before I got wise. They had a deal that if I made 30 trades at $29.95 I would then have the privilege of making the next 15 or 30 trades at something like $19.95. If I surpassed that then I would be able to make trades at $14.95. At the time my number of trades would have been reset to zero evey month and I would have had to start over again at $29.95. At some point they stopped resetting the number of trades to zero every month. Needless to say I didn't trade much, it would have cost me hundreds of dollars a month in commissions just to get to the point where I was able to trade at $5 - $10 per ticket above a discount broker. They do have a lot of research tools, fundamentals, analyst advice, news, things like that that I'm sure some people would be able to benefit from but I've tried making money using those things before and wasn't able to be successeful, so they didn't have much value to me. So I didn't trade, I just relaxed, all the way through the 2000-2001 tech crash, and lost about $12,000. I decided that for me to be in this market I had to be nimble and the $60 round trip commisions I would have to pay were a significant psychological barrier to my getting out of a loosing position. The bottom line is that you have to be diligent in this market and you have to be nimble and change with it. The market won't change for you.
well folks i never thought this would come up here, interesting. well i work for schwab, and no we didnt get the realx speech. we bascially got a slap on the ass for a job well done, and thats it. sure they'll give us the package but what then. but for me i'll rather take the package but unfortunately they dont take any volunteers - bummer i'd take it. well i totaly forgot what the question at hand was, but basicaly i'm just cometing that yeah the butt kicking is coming and i wish that they would just get it over with, last time they drag this on forever, i wish htey would just pull the plug so that i can get on with my life, and go join a prop firm cause being a phone jockey talking to clients who bitch whine why the mkt went down, and how much their act was last year - blah blah bla, i cant take it anymore. ok sorry guys for whining but i just need to get it off the chest, thnx for listening.
Janko, listening to you is just the decent thing to do.... after all, some of us may have been your clients whining about the crummy performance of our ports while at Schwab.
Janko I always realized that the responsibility was entirely my own. The market conditions weren't Schwabs fault and surely not yours. It's effected a lot of people. Sorry to hear about your layoff. I've been through some trying times myself lately and it doesn't seem fair to me, I don't think it is, but, who knows why? (Nothing to do with the market). Good luck with your new career. With your experience your probably off to a good start. Rgds Rigel
thnx guys, i really love trading and i jsut feel like i need to put some of that into some use soon, i feel like i'm just not realizing my potential at schwab. Nothing wrong with schwab its just that its not the place for me, thats all. As far as listetning to clients crying about their accts, i know were here to listen to them (you) and i'm in the same boat with them, but after taking 40 calls a day and hearing it on every other call, its just gets a bit tireing, although lately i just decided to suck it up and actually talk to them about risk management and stops, yeah we are jsut phone jockeys but i figured i might as well share some of my nowledge, and its kinda weird but man i saved a few guys from jumping in to some stocks too soon, technical analysis saved them- that is. Its just kinda nice to see that i saved someone a few grand and gave them a possibility of what might happen and probably might happen, although were not allowed but sometimes i just cant take it to see them to jump in at the top, so i jsut gently bring it up to them, just to make them think a bit, and also teach them about what to do if the trade doesnt go your way, so that i dont have them calling in next week and crying that yeah it went to 50 and i made 10k but i didnt sell and am in the hole now. So i guess i've made few people happy but i guess its time to make me happy now. Need to start trading now, i love this stuff!!!