E-Trade Reports Decline in August Trading

E-Trade Financial Corp. announced Wednesday that average trading volume declined significantly in August.

The New York-based compay said that volume fell 36% from a year earlier and 4.6% from July.

With the exception of May's flash-crash, trading volume has declined throughout the industry in the past quarter, but analysts said in the past several quarters, E-Trade has seen larger trading declines than some of its other large competitors in the electronic brokerage space.

E-Trade said it added 24,927 U.S. brokerage accounts last month to increase its customer base to nearly 2.7 million. In August 2009, the company added 29,985 accounts.

Total customer assets increased 5.2% from a year earlier to $146.6 billion, but down 3.6% from July.

E*Trade had $400 million of client inflows, down from nearly $500 million a year earlier and a month earlier.

At its banking operations, E*Trade said the amount of mortgages from 30 to 179 days delinquent fell 5% from July to August, while those from 30 to 89 days fell 3%.

In July, E-Trade reported trading declined 5.1% from a month earlier and 20% from a year earlier. Charles Schwab Corp. and TD Ameritrade reported separately in July that trading had declined slightly, but not at the same rate as E-Trade.

On Wednesday, Schwab reported that, despite declining trading activity industrywide, it expects third-quarter results will be in line with the previous quarter.