Electronic brokerage firm Interactive Brokers LLC (NASDAQ:IBKR) said its trading volumes rose in August, an indication that investor confidence in the financial markets is rebounding after having been fairly mixed over the past few months.
During August 2022, the number of DARTs was reported at 1.96 million transactions, a rise of eight percent month-over-month from 1.82 million in July. Over a year-on-year basis, Interactive Brokers saw a notable drop in its DARTs with August’s figure down by 9 percent relative to 2.17 million reported in August 2021.
In terms of equity balance in customers’ accounts during August 2022, the figure totaled $310 billion, down by 15 percent on a yearly basis. Interactive Brokers also failed to best its July equivalent, having notched a two percent drop relative to the prior month.
Additionally, the discount brokerage has won 37,000 new accounts as volatile markets had seemingly revived interest from retail investors. August’s active accounts increased to 1.99 million, or 2 percent higher from July and 33 percent above the previous year’s figure of 1.49 million accounts. At this pace, Interactive Brokers is set to cross the two million milestone for the first time in the company’s 44-year history.
IBKR had a busy month
Interactive Brokers had been in the news over the past few weeks. Most recently, the discount broker widened access to cryptocurrency trading for its clients, having extended trading hours for its cryptocurrency products to be traded 24/7, including on the weekends.
Before that, cryptocurrency traders at Interactive Brokers were having their contracts expire each week on Friday, and these were rolled over to the next week. This was instituted to prevent potential gaps that could be incurred by clients to reflect price changes while IBKR trading was closed outside of trading hours.
The broker offers low-cost cryptocurrency trading to its clients via partnership with New York-based exchange and stablecoin issuer, Paxos.
The changes applied by Interactive Brokers help resolve some of the underlying issues that have made it challenging for traders to have access to cryptocurrency trading around the clock. Namely, the extended trading hours eliminate the inconvenience of carrying positions from one week to the next without weekend quotes.
