I think the Top might be close. Everyone seems to be buying stocks according to the WSJ. Small investors are diving back into stock trading, driving business at some discount brokerages to near record levels. After a 15-year period of volatility marked by the dot-com crash and the 2008 financial crisis, individuals are swelling trading volume at firms such as E*Trade Financial Corp. ETFC +1.48% and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. AMTD +0.75% âand stoking worries that investors may be piling in when stocks are at their peak. Brandon Garretson started dabbling in stocks a few years ago as the market began to rally. He got more serious last year after joining an online-trading forum. Now, the 31-year-old salesman of equipment to chemical plants makes about two trades an hour via his TD Ameritrade account. "I love it," said the Baton Rouge, La., resident. "You look over charts and come up with ideas for the next day. There's really not a better feeling," he said. He says he is considering quitting his job to trade full time. Mr. Garretson isn't alone. Average daily client trades at E*Trade Financial totaled about 160,000 in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 25% from a year earlier. At TD Ameritrade, clients made 414,000 trades a day on average in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up 24% from a year earlier. Charles Schwab Corp. SCHW +0.95% customers made 488,000 trades a day on average, up 8%. The trend continued in January, even as stocks fell. At E*Trade, daily trades were up 27% from a year earlier. At TD Ameritrade and Schwab, the increases were 28% and 17%, respectively. TD notched a record number of monthly trades in January, Charles Schwab hit a five-year high and E*Trade reached a level unseen since the "flash crash" of May 2010. Not only are investors trading more, but they also are borrowing more against their portfolios to increase their bets. In December, margin debt hit an all-time high of $444.93 billion, not adjusted for inflation, up 35% from a year earlier, according to the New York Stock Exchange. Analysts said the 30% jump in the S&P 500 index last year, the biggest since 1997, and a strong run of initial public offerings rekindled interest in stocks. The increased trading activity reflects "a level of engagement we have not seen for quite some time," said Matthew Audette, chief financial officer at E*Trade, at an investor presentation on Feb. 11. The risk is that investors are barreling into stocks at the tail end of a historic rally. In January, the S&P 500 declined 3.6%, the largest one-month drop since May 2012. It has risen 171% since its March 2009 low. The index has gained 3% in February. Individual investors "systematically over the last seven years have bought high and sold low," said David Edwards, president of New York-based Heron Financial Group LLC, which manages about $130 million for 90 families. At the beginning of 2009, when stocks reached their nadir, Mr. Edwards said, six of his clients moved their entire portfolios to cash and left his firm. The mood was buoyant earlier this month at the International Traders Expo in New York, one of the largest conferences for active investors. Thousands gathered at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel for three days to see presentations and product demonstrations. Kim Githler, chief executive of MoneyShow Corp., which runs the event, said attendees seemed as enthused as they were before the financial crisis. "People are feeling excited and back in the game," she said. "The energy is so different." It is difficult to compare brokerage trading volumes today with those of the boom during the 1990s, because many firms have boosted their market share as the industry has consolidated. By some measures, investors favor stocks much less now than they did back then. BetterInvesting, a group in Madison Heights, Mich., that supports clubs of individual investors, said total membership at the clubs it tracks dwindled to about 39,000 in 2012, the latest year for which data are available, from 400,000 in 1998. Still, market watchers said there is more optimism now than there has been in many years. In an average week in 2013, 40% of individual investors thought the market would rise over the following six months, while 29% thought it would fall, the biggest advantage of bullish over bearish investors since 2005, according to the American Association of Individual Investors sentiment survey. Rhoda Allen, a 63-year-old retired information-technology professional, said she traded hot stocks such as Nokia Corp. NOK1V.HE +1.39% , during the dot-com bubble but lost more than half her money when the bubble burst. She kept trading stocks, but in 2008 she moved all of her individual stock portfolio into cash. This year she has found herself moving into and out of cash quickly as she tries to get a feel for which direction the market is headed. She has made 40 stock trades this year. In a typical month last year, she made only about 10, she said. Ms. Allen is looking for more stocks to buy. "I think stocks are the only piece of the American dream that's still working." New investors are trying their hand as well. Stephen Prewitt, a 29-year-old disc jockey and videographer in Cleveland, bought his first stock on Jan. 15. He spent 2013 practicing with a simulated portfolio before using actual cash last month. He bought a handful of shares of GrowLife Inc., PHOT -3.18% a seller of products used to grow marijuana whose stock price quadrupled in 2013. He sold the shares earlier this month and bought shares of EarthLink Holdings Corp. ELNK -1.87% , an Internet-services provider. "I don't see myself trying to long-term invest," he said. "If I do enough research and become a good trader, I think I can have a decent retirement when I'm 50 or 60," he said. The process of day-trading has changed significantly over the years. In the 1990s, many investors hunched over computers in brokerage offices or gathered in day-trading complexes in suburban office parks offering strong broadband connections. Now, most traders have access to broadband from home, and more are making transactions via mobile phones. At E*Trade, client trades from mobile accounted for 8.4% of total trades in 2013, up from 4.3% in 2011. "Mobile remains a major focus for us," said John Matos, a senior vice president at E*Trade who oversees the brokerage's digital channels. "Our customers are increasingly engaging with their finances on tablets and smartphones, as evidenced by a record portion of trades being placed" through mobile technologies. Chikoo Patel, a 22-year-old real-estate entrepreneur in Chicago who trades futures contracts on the side, said he whips out his phone at opportune moments. On a dinner date last August that wasn't going particularly well, Mr. Patel pulled out his phone to buy a futures contract while the woman went to the bathroom. "I tried to at least cover the cost of dinner," he said, adding that he put away the phone before she returned. David Niedrauer, 27, said he was an intern at a federal agency last year and heard his colleagues discussing the "hot year" for IPOs. The University of Texas at Austin law student became interested and started reading filings on the Securities and Exchange Commission website so he could compile a list of companies preparing to go public. He said he prefers IPOs that "fly under the radar" but have good growth projections and strong balance sheets. After purchasing biotechnology stocks in 2013, he is focused on fracking companies going public this year, he said. "So far, I'm happy with my decision to get in the market," he said. But rather than buy and hold, he said, he typically unloads his positions a few weeks after building them. In hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, companies typically use a pressurized mixture to unlock shale gas and oil from underground rock. Mr. Garretson, the Baton Rouge trader, said he hopes to become a full-time trader by the end of the year. "You see somebody make a lot of money in a day," he said, "and that shows you it's possible." Write to Joe Light at joe.light@wsj.com and Julie Steinberg at julie.steinberg@wsj.com http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...327918.html&fpid=2,7,121,122,201,401,641,1009