Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.35%) ended June with $182.4 billion of uninvested client cash, up 27% year over year. Not only did the pile grow, but it was bigger still two months after the quarter closed, reaching $185.6 billion at the end of August. And until clients put that money to work, the automated global broker collects interest on it.
They may soon get a big occasion to put some of it to work. Anthropic's initial public offering (IPO) prospectus could arrive as soon as this week. In late August, The Information reported that the artificial intelligence (AI) company planned to release it just after Labor Day, with a market debut following as soon as the end of this month.
Investors project the Claude maker's valuation could land at about $2 trillion, CNBC has reported. They also expect the offering itself could top the largest on record -- the $85.7 billion SpaceX (SPCX -1.20%) raised in its June debut.
Anthropic's timing is a plan, not a scheduled event. There's no public prospectus, no price, and no share count yet.
But I think the setup is worth examining, because the broker just lived through a version of it. What does a huge listing do to this business?
Image source: The Motley Fool.
A cash pile that paysInteractive Brokers earns money on client cash in a straightforward way. It segregates customer cash as regulators require and invests the majority of that segregated cash in short-term U.S. government securities and related instruments. Clients earn interest on qualifying U.S. dollar balances, and the company keeps a spread for itself: half a percentage point below the benchmark federal funds rate.
At today's scale, net interest income is the company's biggest revenue line. It rose 23% year over year to $1.06 billion in the second quarter, helped by growing customer credit balances and a 67% jump in customer margin loans. That was more than half of the quarter's $1.9 billion of total net revenues. Notably, the growth came from bigger balances. The company's net interest margin narrowed to 1.93% from 2.07% a year earlier as interest rates declined, yet net interest income climbed anyway.
In other words, the cash isn't idle from the broker's perspective. Every uninvested dollar earns the company a little interest, and clients added about $39 billion of those dollars over the past year.
SpaceX's debut didn't drain the pileIf a giant IPO were going to pull client cash out of the business for good, the second quarter was the test. SpaceX went public on June 12, and Interactive Brokers participated directly. "In Europe, we directly offered the SpaceX IPO to eligible U.K. and European retail clients, providing access across multiple countries," said Nancy Stuebe, the company's director of investor relations, on the July earnings call.
The trading side delivered. Commission revenue hit a record $673 million in the second quarter, up 30% year over year and accelerating from 19% growth in the first quarter.
But the cash pile grew anyway. Client equity climbed to $962.8 billion in August, up 35% year over year, and customers traded more too -- daily average revenue trades rose 23%.
And a big reason the cash keeps pace is that new customers keep arriving. Client accounts reached 5.46 million in August, up 35% from a year earlier.
Will Anthropic be a repeat?Two things would have to happen first. The offering has to arrive at all. Anthropic's June filing was a confidential draft registration statement, and the company has said the proposed offering will depend on market conditions.
Interactive Brokers would also need access to the shares. The company hasn't said anything about distributing Anthropic's offering, and its SpaceX access was limited to eligible retail clients in the U.K. and Europe. I wouldn't assume a repeat until the company announces one.
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Still, the second quarter suggests shareholders don't need one. Heavier customer trading can lift commissions, while account growth keeps refilling the interest-earning cash pile.
Ultimately, I view an Anthropic debut as a potential bonus for this business rather than a swing factor. Even at a record $673 million, commissions remain the smaller of the company's two big revenue lines.
The stock, meanwhile, sits near $92 as of this writing, about 6% short of its 52-week high. And it trades at about 29 times what analysts expect it to earn next year -- arguably a rich price for a brokerage, although one attached to 28% net revenue growth and a pretax profit margin that expanded to 77% last quarter.
I wouldn't buy shares because of an IPO on the horizon. The account growth that keeps refilling that cash pile matters a lot more.
Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
Momentum investing is all about the idea of following a stock's recent trend, which can be in either direction. In the "long context," investors will essentially be "buying high, but hoping to sell even higher." And for investors following this methodology, taking advantage of trends in a stock's price is key; once a stock establishes a course, it is more than likely to continue moving in that direction. The goal is that once a stock heads down a fixed path, it will lead to timely and profitable trades.
While many investors like to look for momentum in stocks, this can be very tough to define. There is a lot of debate surrounding which metrics are the best to focus on and which are poor quality indicators of future performance. The Zacks Momentum Style Score, part of the Zacks Style Scores, helps address this issue for us.
Below, we take a look at Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) , which currently has a Momentum Style Score of B. We also discuss some of the main drivers of the Momentum Style Score, like price change and earnings estimate revisions.
It's also important to note that Style Scores work as a complement to the Zacks Rank, our stock rating system that has an impressive track record of outperformance. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. currently has a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy). Our research shows that stocks rated Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and #2 (Buy) and Style Scores of "A or B" outperform the market over the following one-month period.
You can see the current list of Zacks #1 Rank Stocks here >>>
Set to Beat the Market? In order to see if IBKR is a promising momentum pick, let's examine some Momentum Style elements to see if this company holds up.
A good momentum benchmark for a stock is to look at its short-term price activity, as this can reflect both current interest and if buyers or sellers currently have the upper hand. It is also useful to compare a security to its industry, as this can help investors pinpoint the top companies in a particular area.
For IBKR, shares are up 2.1% over the past week while the Zacks Financial - Investment Bank industry is up 0.95% over the same time period. Shares are looking quite well from a longer time frame too, as the monthly price change of 8.06% compares favorably with the industry's 2.24% performance as well.
While any stock can see a spike in price, it takes a real winner to consistently outperform the market. Over the past quarter, shares of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. have risen 4.64%, and are up 44.6% in the last year. In comparison, the S&P 500 has only moved 2.89% and 21.4%, respectively.
Investors should also take note of IBKR's average 20-day trading volume. Volume is a useful item in many ways, and the 20-day average establishes a good price-to-volume baseline; a rising stock with above average volume is generally a bullish sign, whereas a declining stock on above average volume is typically bearish. Right now IBKR is averaging 4,149,987 shares for the last 20 days..
Earnings OutlookThe Zacks Momentum Style Score also takes into account trends in estimate revisions, in addition to price changes. Please note that estimate revision trends remain at the core of Zacks Rank as well. A nice path here can help show promise, and we have recently been seeing that with IBKR.
Over the past two months, 3 earnings estimates moved higher compared to none lower for the full year. These revisions helped boost IBKR's consensus estimate, increasing from $2.46 to $2.68 in the past 60 days. Looking at the next fiscal year, 3 estimates have moved upwards while there have been no downward revisions in the same time period.
Bottom LineGiven these factors, it shouldn't be surprising that IBKR is a #1 (Strong Buy) stock and boasts a Momentum Score of B. If you're looking for a fresh pick that's set to soar in the near-term, make sure to keep Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. on your short list.
Key Takeaways IBKR, SNDK, and ROKU all sport a favorable Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), reflecting a strong earnings picture. Each has posted strong results in 2026, with shares seeing strong gains on a YTD basis. Positive earnings estimate revisions are among the strongest signals investors can receive concerning a company’s near-term earnings outlook. Analysts typically raise their expectations as business trends improve, with the favorable revisions commonly helping drive near-term share performance as well.
For investors seeking stocks with improving earnings pictures, Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) , SanDisk (SNDK - Free Report) , and Roku (ROKU - Free Report) all fit the bill. Each currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), reflecting bullish EPS revisions over the near term.
Interactive BrokersInteractive Brokers Group is an automated global electronic brokerage firm providing trade execution, clearing, and custody services to individual and institutional investors. EPS revisions have remained bullish across the board, with current Zacks Consensus EPS estimates for FY26 and FY27 suggesting YoY growth rates of 23% and 18%, respectively.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The positivity is easy to understand when looking at its latest results. IBKR posted adjusted earnings of $0.69 per share in Q2, up 35% YoY, with net revenues climbing 28% to $1.90 billion. Commission revenue jumped 30% to $673 million, while net interest income increased 23% to $1.06 billion.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Importantly, the underlying customer trends remain rock-solid. Total DARTs climbed 36% YoY to 4.8 million, while customer accounts increased 34% to roughly 5.2 million.
The company continues to attract new customers while existing clients remain highly active, creating a favorable combination for earnings growth. And with both account growth and trading activity remaining strong, analysts have pushed expectations higher.
SanDiskSanDisk has seen an even more eye-popping shift in its earnings outlook, with AI-driven demand and a favorable NAND pricing environment fueling huge growth. The current Zacks Consensus EPS estimates for its current and next fiscal year reflect YoY growth rates of 200% and 19%, respectively.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
To little surprise, its latest quarterly results helped fuel the revisions. SanDisk posted revenue of $8.97 billion, up 51% sequentially, with adjusted EPS reaching $39.25. Roughly two-thirds of the sequential revenue growth came from higher pricing, while the remaining third reflected increased volumes.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Datacenter has emerged as a major growth pillar, driven by the ongoing AI infrastructure buildout. Quarterly Datacenter revenue reached roughly $3 billion, doubling sequentially, while full-year Datacenter sales surged 437% to $5.15 billion.
Simply put, explosive Datacenter demand, sharply higher pricing, and a massive improvement in profitability have forced analysts to continually raise their earnings expectations.
RokuRoku’s earnings picture has similarly shifted in a much more bullish direction, with the company benefiting from stronger monetization across its large streaming audience. Like those above, EPS revisions remain bullish, with annual consensus expectations suggesting growth rates of 370% and 40%, respectively.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The upward shift in EPS revisions follows another strong quarterly showing. Roku posted Q2 earnings of $1.18 per share, crushing the $0.61 Zacks Consensus estimate, with revenues of $1.35 billion also coming in ahead of expectations and growing 22% YoY.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Platform results remain the main driving force. Platform revenue climbed 25% YoY to $1.22 billion, fueled by 25% growth in Advertising revenue and 26% growth in Subscriptions. Streaming Hours also increased 7% to 37.9 billion, while total gross profit jumped 35%.
Roku is increasingly monetizing its streaming footprint more efficiently, with higher advertising activity, continued subscription growth, and expanding margins all having a positive impact.
Bottom Line
Positive earnings estimate revisions paint a favorable picture for Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) , SanDisk (SNDK - Free Report) , and Roku (ROKU - Free Report) , with all three currently carrying a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
And importantly, the revisions are being backed by strong underlying business trends. IBKR continues to benefit from rapid account growth and elevated trading activity, SanDisk is seeing explosive AI-related Datacenter demand paired with much stronger NAND pricing, and Roku continues to improve the monetization of its streaming audience through Advertising and Subscriptions.
For investors seeking stocks with favorable earnings momentum, all three are certainly worth a closer look.
Analyst upgrades are piling onto Robinhood just as its fastest-growing business surpasses crypto revenue, raising the question of whether the platform has fundamentally changed or simply run ahead of itself.
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Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD | HOOD Price Prediction) stock is rallying 11% to $118.88 in Thursday trading as a series of bullish analyst calls reinforces the case that Robinhood is becoming more than a traditional retail brokerage. Webull (NASDAQ:BULL) stock is climbing 7% to $9.62, while Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ:IBKR) stock is gaining 4% to $92.44, giving the broader online-brokerage group a strong showing.
Robinhood’s latest boost follows Morgan Stanley’s September 1 upgrade of Robinhood stock to Overweight from Equal Weight, accompanied by a price-target increase to $150 from $124. Morgan Stanley also raised its earnings estimates for Robinhood as analysts pointed to prediction markets, growing customer assets and the company’s expanding collection of financial products as additional sources of growth.
Robinhood’s Growth Story Is Expanding Robinhood’s second-quarter results provided plenty of evidence for the bullish argument, with revenue reaching a record $1.31 billion and net income climbing 48% year over year to $573 million. Robinhood Markets also reported 28.5 million funded customers and $355 billion in total platform assets as of July 31, while its 12-month net-deposit growth rate stood at 25%.
Robinhood’s prediction-market business is particularly important because event-contract revenue reached $156 million in Q2, surpassing cryptocurrency revenue of $100 million. Robinhood also reported that event contracts traded increased more than tenfold year over year to 13.6 billion, suggesting that prediction markets could become an increasingly important part of the platform’s economics.
Webull And Interactive Brokers Join The Rally Webull stock is climbing alongside Robinhood stock, although the two companies have different stages of growth and product development. Webull’s 7% advance gives investors another indication that enthusiasm around retail trading platforms is extending beyond HOOD, while the smaller brokerage remains more exposed to fluctuations in trading activity and investor sentiment.
Interactive Brokers stock is also gaining 4% to $92.44, although Interactive Brokers has a substantially different business mix that includes institutional customers and a broad international footprint. Interactive Brokers reported 5.19 million customer accounts in Q2, up 34% year over year, while average daily revenue trades increased 36% and margin loans jumped 67%.
Bitcoin And IBIT Add Another Layer The iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ:IBIT) is rising 2% to $44.65, while Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) is up 3% over the past 24 hours to $78,830.12. That backdrop is helpful for Robinhood Markets because cryptocurrency remains an important part of its platform, even though the latest bullish thesis increasingly rests on prediction markets, active trading, asset-based revenue and other businesses.
Robinhood’s Q2 cryptocurrency trading volume actually declined 38% year over year, demonstrating why the company’s diversification matters. Robinhood Markets has also expanded into banking, retirement, credit cards, advisory services and prediction markets, giving the business several potential growth engines if cryptocurrency activity remains uneven.
HOOD’s Bull And Bear Cases The bullish case for Robinhood is becoming broader as the platform adds products that can increase activity and assets per customer. Morgan Stanley’s September upgrade reflects the view that Robinhood can generate more revenue from its existing customer base rather than depending primarily on adding new funded accounts.
The bearish case is that expectations are rising along with HOOD stock, potentially leaving less room for disappointment. Robinhood also remains exposed to trading volumes, cryptocurrency prices, prediction-market regulation and the possibility that some of its newer businesses won’t produce the economics investors currently anticipate.
Robinhood stock’s 11% Thursday-morning rally puts the shares close to the $120.05 technical buy point identified after the recent analyst upgrade. Investors can watch for whether HOOD stock can hold its gains while Robinhood continues converting its expanding product lineup into recurring revenue and customer assets.
Robinhood Markets has a stronger growth story than the traditional brokerage label might suggest, but the stock’s rapid advance also means expectations could become demanding. Investors who want exposure to the expansion of retail trading, prediction markets and digital financial services should consider keeping their HOOD position sizes moderate, particularly after an 11% single-day move.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Key Takeaways Interactive Brokers' client DARTs rose 23% y/y to 4.28 million in August 2026.IBKR gained from market volatility tied to monetary policy, inflation and geopolitical developments.Interactive Brokers' net new accounts jumped 49% y/y, while total accounts increased 35%. Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) announced the Electronic Brokerage segment’s (deals with the clearance and settlement of trades for individual and institutional clients globally) performance metrics for August 2026. Supported by a favorable trading environment, total client Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) increased 23% year over year to 4,276,000.
In the reported month, investor activity benefited from sizable moves across equity, fixed-income and commodity markets amid shifting expectations for U.S. monetary policy, inflation concerns and geopolitical developments. Toward the end of August, renewed U.S.-Iran tensions pushed oil prices and interest rates higher, while the Federal Reserve policy expectations shifted following hawkish commentary, creating additional market uncertainty and trading opportunities.
Beyond a favorable trading backdrop, Interactive Brokers benefited from company-specific strengths. Its low-cost structure, competitive margin rates, ongoing product enhancements, streamlined account-opening process and highly efficient operating model supported strong client acquisition. At the end of August, net new accounts were 143,200, which jumped 49% year over year and total customer accounts touched 5.46 million, increasing 35%.
If we look at the other metrics, total options contracts were 138.3 million in August 2026, up 2% year over year. Futures contracts increased 1% to 17.4 million. Client equity was $962.8 billion, which jumped 35% year over year. Client credit balances of $185.6 billion increased 27%, whereas the company's customer margin loan balance of $101.5 billion grew 41%.
IBKR’s efforts to broaden its addressable market by adding new products and capabilities will likely further deepen client engagement and increase wallet share. At the same time, the company’s efforts to expand its international platform positions it to capitalize on growing cross-border investing activity and wealth creation across global markets. Together, these factors are expected to aid sustained revenue growth. Over 2020-2025, Interactive Brokers’ total net revenues saw a compound annual growth rate of 22.8%, aided by higher interest income, commission revenues and business expansion.
Business Diversification Efforts of IBKR’s PeersIBKR’s key competitors, Charles Schwab (SCHW - Free Report) and Robinhood Markets, Inc. (HOOD - Free Report) , have also been continuously rolling out products and services to bolster market share.
Schwab is diversifying beyond brokerage through wealth management, banking, asset management, lending and alternative investments. This is broadening Schwab’s revenue base and deepening client relationships. These offerings attract more assets and encourage clients to consolidate finances on its platform, supporting higher engagement and creating additional opportunities for trading activity.
Robinhood is diversifying beyond traditional stock trading through crypto, retirement, credit cards, advisory services, prediction markets and international expansion. This broader ecosystem attracts new customers and assets while increasing platform engagement, creating cross-selling opportunities at Robinhood. This is supporting higher trading activity across equities, options, futures and digital assets.
IBKR’s Price Performance & Zacks RankShares of Interactive Brokers have rallied 30.2% in the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 19%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Currently, Interactive Brokers sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.25%) isn't an artificial intelligence (AI) company. It doesn't build AI models like OpenAI or Anthropic. It doesn't make chips like Nvidia. And it doesn't sell software designed to automate businesses.
Yet, AI could become an important part of the Interactive Brokers' future. That's because Interactive Brokers has already spent decades building a foundation that's much harder to replicate: a global financial platform that connects investors to markets, currencies, trading tools, and investment products worldwide.
Now, AI could make that platform even more powerful over time.
Image source: Getty Images.
AI could change how people invest Think about how most people use a brokerage today. They open an app, search for a stock, look at charts, read financial information, decide what to do, and then place an order.
That's manageable for experienced investors. But it can be intimidating for the average investor who wants to invest globally but doesn't understand all the tools available to them. AI could turn that experience upside down.
Instead of searching through menus, an investor could ask: "How much of my portfolio is exposed to technology?" Or: "Find five European companies with strong cash flow and lower valuations than their peers." Or: "Show me how my portfolio might perform if interest rates stay higher for longer."
The AI can do the analysis and, where supported, generate instructions for a trade. Of course, the investor remains in control of approving the final transaction.
To this end, Interactive Brokers has already begun connecting its platform with AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. It has also opened its platform to AI applications that use the Model Context Protocol, a standard that allows AI systems to connect with external tools and data.
In other words, AI could elevate the user's experience when making financial decisions on the platform.
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AI could unlock the platform that Interactive Brokers has already built Interactive Brokers has spent decades building an enormous amount of financial infrastructure. Its customers can access more than 170 market centers across dozens of countries and currencies. The platform supports stocks, options, futures, bonds, funds, currencies, and other assets. That's an extraordinary amount of financial firepower.
But there's a catch. The more powerful a platform becomes, the more complicated it can be. This is where AI could become a game changer. AI can sit between the investor and the platform's complexity. The investor doesn't need to understand every function. They simply need to explain what they want to accomplish. In other words, AI could make the platform's complexity less of a barrier. That could open the door to a much larger group of investors.
Besides, Interactive Brokers can leverage AI companies' expertise to build the best investing AI agents. The former can then focus on what it does best -- providing the underlying financial infrastructure for areas such as market access, execution, account information, risk management, and other services.
The idea is simple. The more AI interfaces connect to the platform, the more useful its infrastructure could become.
The opportunity may lie in AI-assisted investing, not AI investing There is an important distinction investor should understand. The opportunity isn't necessarily about letting AI trade people's money autonomously. That's a much more complicated proposition, with significant regulatory and risk considerations.
The bigger opportunity could be in AI-assisted investing. AI can help people research companies, understand portfolios, compare investments, identify risks, and navigate markets that previously seemed too complicated. That could be particularly valuable for Interactive Brokers. The company doesn't need to become the best AI developer in the world, it simply needs to make its financial infrastructure accessible to the best AI tools.
Imagine a world in which an investor doesn't choose a brokerage because its app has the prettiest interface. Instead, the investor chooses an AI assistant -- and that assistant connects to a brokerage underneath. If that happens, Interactive Brokers could create enormous long-term shareholder value.
What does it mean for investors? Let's begin by saying that we shouldn't get carried away.
AI isn't yet a major earnings driver for Interactive Brokers. We don't know how many customers will actually use these tools, how much additional trading they will generate, or whether Interactive Brokers will capture meaningful economics from AI-enabled investing.
So, this is optionality, not yet a proven growth engine. Still, Interactive Brokers is actively positioning itself to benefit from this trend. Investors should closely track how the company executes its AI strategy, as it may define the company's next growth phase.
Investors interested in Finance stocks should always be looking to find the best-performing companies in the group. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) is a stock that can certainly grab the attention of many investors, but do its recent returns compare favorably to the sector as a whole? By taking a look at the stock's year-to-date performance in comparison to its Finance peers, we might be able to answer that question.
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. is one of 873 individual stocks in the Finance sector. Collectively, these companies sit at #4 in the Zacks Sector Rank. The Zacks Sector Rank considers 16 different groups, measuring the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within the sector to gauge the strength of each group.
The Zacks Rank emphasizes earnings estimates and estimate revisions to find stocks with improving earnings outlooks. This system has a long record of success, and these stocks tend to be on track to beat the market over the next one to three months. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #1 (Strong Buy).
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for IBKR's full-year earnings has moved 9.2% higher within the past quarter. This shows that analyst sentiment has improved and the company's earnings outlook is stronger.
According to our latest data, IBKR has moved about 40.6% on a year-to-date basis. In comparison, Finance companies have returned an average of 7.4%. This means that Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. is outperforming the sector as a whole this year.
Another stock in the Finance sector, Adamas Trust (ADAM - Free Report) , has outperformed the sector so far this year. The stock's year-to-date return is 31.6%.
The consensus estimate for Adamas Trust's current year EPS has increased 14.3% over the past three months. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Looking more specifically, Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. belongs to the Financial - Investment Bank industry, which includes 22 individual stocks and currently sits at #32 in the Zacks Industry Rank.
In contrast, Adamas Trust falls under the REIT and Equity Trust industry. Currently, this industry has 27 stocks and is ranked #236.
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. and Adamas Trust could continue their solid performance, so investors interested in Finance stocks should continue to pay close attention to these stocks.
Americké akciové indexy uzavřely úvodní seanci nového měsíce v negativním teritoriu v čele s technologickým Nasdaqem, který odepsal více než 1 %. Širší index S&P500 ztratil přes 0,7 % a tradiční index Dow Jones bezmála 0,8 % na pozadí zvýšeného geopolitického napětí na Blízkém východě, posunující cenu ropy (+5,6 %) nad hladinu 90 USD/barel. Vedle akcií se nedařilo ani dluhopisům, které oslabily napříč splatnostmi. Výnos 10letého vládního bondu končil téměř na úrovni 4,8 % (vs. 4,76 % včera). Ztrátový den vykázaly také drahé kovy. Zlato odepsalo 2,7 % se závěrem na 4328 USD/oz, stříbro pak o 3,6 % na 64,1 USD/oz.
Závěrečné hodnoty:
Dow Jones -0,79 % na 52767,59 b.
S&P 500 -0,71 % na 7631,54 b.
Nasdaq Composite -1,03 % na 26099,77 b.
Index S&P 500 -0,71 % na 7631,54 b. Nejsilnější sektory S&P Změna Nejslabší sektory S&P Změna Energie +1,5 % Zbytná spotřeba -1,9 % Utility +0,8 % Průmysl -1,4 % Zdravotní péče +0,7 % Základní materiály -1,4 % Nejsilnější akcie S&P Změna Nejslabší akcie S&P Změna Moderna (MRNA) +9,9 % Axon Enterprise (AXON) -8,5 % Edison International (EIX) +8,9 % Cadence Design Systems (CDNS) -7,6 % PG&E Corp (PCG) +6,0 % Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR) -7,1 % HP (HPQ) +4,3 % Crowdstrike Holdings (CRWD) -6,9 % CF Industries Holdings (CF) +4,3 % Dell Technologies (DELL) -6,9 %
David Lamač
Fio banka, a.s.
Prohlášení
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR) an automated global electronic broker, today reported its Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for Au
Shares of Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR -6.39%) slipped on Tuesday, falling as much as 6.3%. As of 2:18 p.m. ET, the stock was still down 6%.
The catalyst that drove the brokerage and trading platform lower was bearish commentary by one of Wall Street's finest.
Image source: The Motley Fool.
Fully baked? UBS analyst Michael Brown downgraded Interactive Brokers to neutral (hold) from buy, though he increased his price target to $102, up from $50. That represents potential upside for investors of roughly 5% compared to Monday's closing price -- so he's clearly playing catch-up.
Brown appears to have mixed feelings about the stock. One the one hand, the analyst views Interactive Brokers as "a best-in-class broker with a compelling growth runway." He expects the company to generate low-teens earnings per share (EPS) growth over the coming five years, fueled by account and client asset growth and increased trading activity. The analyst also called the platform "highly efficient," which will allow Interactive Brokers to maintain its gross margin in the high 70% range.
The analyst also cited a suite of new products -- including cryptocurrency, prediction markets, and advanced tools -- which he believes will deepen both customer engagement and wallet share.
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So what's not to like? Brown says the current stock price "already reflects much of that advantage."
The analyst has a point. As of market close yesterday, Interactive Brokers stock was trading for nearly 39 times earnings and 36 times forward earnings. While that's not particularly egregious, the valuation is a bit stretched for a company expected to grow earnings by low double digits.
On the other hand, Interactive Brokers' stock is up 47% over the past year, well ahead of the 18% gains of the S&P 500. In fact, the stock has far outpaced the broader market over the past three and five years -- which helps illustrate why Interactive Brokers is deserving of a premium.
Danny Vena, CPA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $43.75 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $46.25 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)---- $IBKR #IBKR--Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR) an automated global electronic broker, today reported its Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for August. Brokerage highlights for the month included: 4.276 million Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs)1, 23% higher than prior year and 3% lower than prior month. Ending client equity of $962.8 billion, 35% higher than prior year and 6% higher than prior month. Ending client margin loan balances of $101.
There is a good chance you've never thought of Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.73%) as a high-growth stock.
That may be exactly why its performance is so interesting. During the past five years, Interactive Brokers' stock has gained nearly 500%, rising from about $15 to $93 (as of Aug. 24).
Interactive Brokers isn't an artificial intelligence (AI) stock. It doesn't make graphics processing units (GPUs). It doesn't build large language models. It doesn't run data centers. It operates an online brokerage.
So how did a financial service company that rarely dominates headlines produce a return that would make many technology investors jealous?
Image source: Getty Images.
The business has been quietly growing over the years Interactive Brokers may not appear to be a growth stock, but that doesn't stop the company from growing. Let's start with customer growth.
At the end of 2025, Interactive Brokers had about 4.4 million customer accounts. By the second quarter of 2026, that number had reached 5.19 million -- a 34% increase from a year earlier. Customer equity reached $930.3 billion, up 40%, while daily average revenue trades increased 36% to 4.82 million.
But the company hasn't just been increasing its customer base recently. By the end of 2021, it had only 1.7 million customer accounts and $374 billion in customer equity. So across almost every important metric, the company has been improving over the years.
Those numbers demonstrate that Interactive Brokers isn't simply a brokerage collecting commissions from the same customers year after year. It is adding customers rapidly, attracting more assets, and increasing activity across the platform.
And because its infrastructure is highly automated, the economics of that growth can be unusually attractive. For perspective, revenue grew by 126% between 2021 and 2025, while net income more than tripled during the same period.
That's the beauty of operating leverage: When revenue grows faster than expenses, more of each additional dollar can reach the bottom line. That's the first reason the stock has compounded so quickly.
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The market began to see a different kind of broker The second reason is more subtle.
For years, investors could reasonably put Interactive Brokers in the same broad category as other online brokers. But the company's economics increasingly made that comparison less useful.
Interactive Brokers provides access to more than 170 markets across 40 countries and 29 currencies. Customers can trade stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds, and other products on a single platform.
That breadth matters because it creates a powerful combination: More customers means more assets, which invites more activity, which generates more revenue, which drives more operating leverage.
The company also doesn't need every customer to be a high-frequency trader. A customer who brings substantial assets to the platform can generate value through multiple channels, including trading, margin lending, cash balances, and other services.
That makes the customer relationship more valuable than a simple commission transaction. And investors, unsurprisingly, rewarded the company with a higher valuation. Five years ago, the stock traded at roughly an 18 to 20 price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio. Today, it trades at a P/E of 37.
But can the next five years look anything like the last five? This is where the investment story becomes much harder. A 500% gain creates a dangerous temptation: extrapolation.
Investors may look at the past five years and assume another 500% is possible simply because the business is still growing rapidly.
But here's the thing. The stock price has already moved dramatically, and the valuation is much higher than it was five years ago. That means the next leg of the investment case will increasingly depend on earnings growth, rather than on investors simply discovering the company and assigning it a higher valuation.
Fortunately, the runway isn't necessarily finished. If Interactive Brokers can continue to expand its customer base, client assets, and trading activity while preserving its exceptional cost structure, earnings can continue to compound. That's what investors should watch.
What does it mean for investors? Interactive Brokers' 500% five-year return isn't about riding an AI story. It is an example of quiet compounding.
The company kept adding customers. Those customers brought more assets. More assets generated more activity and revenue. And the company's automated infrastructure enabled a large portion of that growth to translate into profit.
But the biggest mistake investors can make now is assuming that the stock's past performance guarantees its future. It doesn't. The easy part may already be behind us. From here, the business has to earn its way into a higher valuation.
Still, if the company continues to compound its earnings at anything close to its historical pace, the stock price can continue to rise.
The crypto market is barely moving, yet retail broker stocks are surging hard, and the explanation traces back to a regulatory change that quietly unlocked millions of small accounts for active trading.
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Retail brokers are catching a strong bid at midday Tuesday even as the underlying crypto tape barely budges. Robinhood Markets (NASDAQ:HOOD | HOOD Price Prediction) stock is up 7% to $110.97, while Webull (NASDAQ:BULL) stock is climbing 4% to $8.86. The trigger sits with Webull CEO Anthony Denier, who told CNBC that retail buy orders for the largest cryptocurrencies have exploded since the June 4 repeal of the pattern day trader rule.
That distinction matters for how the tape gets read today. Brokers earn on order flow and transaction volume, not on the price of the underlying coin. Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) is up only 0.4% over the past 24 hours, yet retail activity is spiking at the BTC price hovers near $80,000, and the money follows the volume.
The fund framing tells the story cleanly. The ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF (CBOE:ARKF) is up 2% to $46.45, while the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (NASDAQ:IBIT) is up 0.6% to $44.92. Fintech brokers get the crypto-activity premium while the pure spot Bitcoin fund barely moves.
Retail Order Flow Ignites After PDT Repeal Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” Denier stated, “We’re seeing over the past week and a half, we’re seeing almost a 300% increase in buy-side orders for the big cryptos, Bitcoin and ETH.” The old pattern day trader rule required $25,000 minimum equity for accounts making four or more day trades in five business days.
The average Webull account holds roughly $5,500, so most of the platform’s users previously could not day trade unrestricted assets at all. Its repeal unlocked a large cohort. Denier tied the change directly to Webull’s revenue lift, adding, “We went from a $160 million top line revenue in Q1 to near $200 million basically on one month’s addition, which was June of Q2 that removed the PDT rule.”
Webull’s Q2 2026 report supports that framing. Revenue of $198.83 million beat the $182.83 million consensus, trading-related revenue climbed 66% year over year to $147.7 million, and daily average revenue trades hit a record 1.6 million.
Broker Read-Through vs. the Coin Trade Bitcoin trades at $79,377.30, up 0.4% over the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, Ethereum (CRYPTO:ETH) sits at $2,475.16, down 0.5% over that time span. The contrast between the flat coin tape and the broker rally is the whole point of the setup.
Robinhood has no company-specific catalyst today, so its move is a straight read-across from the Webull interview. Its Q2 2026 earnings report already showed transaction-based revenues up 44% to $776 million, with equities revenue up 95% and record net deposits of $22 billion. CEO Vlad Tenev stated the “core business is humming.”
Also inside the same active-trader ecosystem, Interactive Brokers Group (NASDAQ:IBKR) posted Q2 2026 customer accounts up 34% year over year, reinforcing the theme. At the same time, Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) is the crypto-native venue comparison, and any sustained retail-flow rebound would feed straight into its spot volumes after a 25% quarter-over-quarter drop in Q2.
What to Watch Now Robinhood Markets stock was down 8% year to date through Monday’s close, so today’s rally claws back a chunk of that gap. Webull stock was up 10% year to date (YTD) through Monday’s close, extending a recovery from a rough one-year stretch that had shares under pressure.
Investors can watch for whether Robinhood Markets stock holds above the $110 handle into the bell and whether the crypto order surge Denier flagged shows up in Webull’s Q3 print. Position sizing here should stay measured. A single interview cycle can spark a session, but broker economics ultimately rest on whether the post-PDT retail cohort keeps trading actively into year-end.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Key Takeaways IBKR's Daol tie-up expands Korean investors' access to global equities through Daol's platform.The partnership leverages Daol's local reach and IBKR's technology and infrastructure for global investing.IBKR's July DARTs rose 27% year over year, while client accounts increased 34% to 5.32 million. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) is expanding its global footprint. Through a strategic collaboration with Daol Investment & Securities, the company will provide eligible South Korean investors with cost-effective access to global equities.
Interactive Brokers continues to expand its international platform to capture rising cross-border investing. In May 2026, the company enabled eligible clients to trade Korea Exchange-listed equities, followed by the launch of Nextrade in June.
The Daol partnership aligns with IBKR’s technology-driven brokerage model. By working with Daol, the company will likely be able to leverage its local market presence and client relationships while providing the technology and infrastructure required for international investing. The collaboration also reinforces the company’s white-label and introducing-broker capabilities, providing a scalable avenue to expand client reach and trading activity.
Daol plans to expand access to markets, derivatives, and direct-investment services in South Korea for overseas investors, creating an opportunity for a broader two-way global investment platform. For IBKR, greater adoption of international products could drive higher trading volumes and increase utilization of its brokerage infrastructure. Its introducing-broker offering provides access to more than 170 markets, real-time risk management and monitoring, and competitive pricing without ticket charges or minimums. Interactive Brokers also carries no technology, software, platform, or reporting fees, strengthening its value proposition for institutional partners.
IBKR’s strong operating momentum further supports growth opportunity. In July 2026, daily average revenue trades increased 27% year over year to 4.43 million, while client accounts rose 34% to 5.32 million. Client equity grew 32% to $906.7 billion, and margin loan balances jumped 49% to $100.7 billion. Continued growth in accounts, client assets, and trading activity highlights strong platform engagement.
Though the Daol collaboration is not expected to impact IBKR’s near-term financial results, it could support long-term growth by expanding the company’s South Korean client reach and increasing trading activity.
Our Take on IBKRThe Daol collaboration is a positive strategic development for Interactive Brokers. It strengthens the company’s presence in South Korea while demonstrating the scalability of its technology-led model. This, combined with strong account growth and rising trading activity, will support the company’s long-term international expansion strategy.
Over the past year, shares of IBKR have gained 48.3%, significantly outperforming the industry's 22.9% increase.
One-Year Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
At present, Interactive Brokers sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Business Expansion Efforts by Other Financial FirmsIn August 2026, Banco Santander S.A. (SAN - Free Report) completed the acquisition of Webster Financial, creating a larger and more diversified U.S. banking franchise. The $12.3 billion deal expands SAN’s scale, strengthens its Northeast presence, and enhances its commercial banking and deposit capabilities.
The acquisition supports SAN’s strategy of expanding its U.S. franchise and is expected to generate around $800 million in annual pre-tax cost synergies and 7-8% EPS accretion by 2028.
Likewise, T. Rowe Price Group, Inc. (TROW - Free Report) agreed to acquire F/m Investments LLC, a fixed-income asset manager and exchange-traded fund (ETF) specialist with approximately $19 billion in assets under management (AUM). The deal will strengthen TROW’s fixed-income capabilities, expand its ETF and separately managed account offerings, and diversify its investment platform beyond traditional mutual funds.
The acquisition is expected to increase TROW’s fixed-income AUM by nearly 9% and more than double its fixed-income ETF AUM, supporting its strategy to capture growing demand for ETFs and customized investment solutions.
Key Takeaways Schwab's client assets hit $13.1T, while active brokerage accounts rose 6% to 39.8M.Interactive Brokers' client equity jumped 40% to $930.3B, reflecting stronger growth momentum.Schwab trades at 15.27X forward earnings versus Interactive Brokers' 32.67X premium valuation. Charles Schwab (SCHW - Free Report) and Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR - Free Report) are two prominent players in the brokerage space, but their business models and growth profiles differ considerably. Schwab combines brokerage, wealth management, banking and advisory services at enormous scale, while Interactive Brokers relies heavily on its technology-driven trading platform, global reach and appeal among active and sophisticated investors.
Both companies are benefiting from healthy investor engagement, rising client assets and increased trading activity. However, the key question for investors is whether Interactive Brokers’ faster growth trajectory offers a better opportunity or Schwab’s massive client franchise and improving earnings profile make it the more attractive investment.
SCHW & IBKR Benefit From Strong Client GrowthSchwab continues to leverage its enormous scale to attract client assets. In the second quarter of 2026, the company gathered $118.7 billion in total net new assets. Total client assets reached a record $13.1 trillion as of June 30, 2026, up 22% year over year. Active brokerage accounts increased 6% to 39.8 million, while daily average trades rose 57% to 11.9 million.
This strong asset-gathering ability remains one of Schwab’s biggest competitive advantages. Its broad range of brokerage, banking, retirement, advisory and wealth-management products provides significant cross-selling opportunities and supports recurring fee revenues.
Interactive Brokers, however, has been expanding at a faster pace. At the end of the second quarter of 2026, client equity reached $930.3 billion, up 40% year over year. The company had roughly 5.19 million client accounts and recorded 4.82 million daily average revenue trades. Its platform provides access to more than 170 market centers across 40 countries, offering a significant advantage among sophisticated and internationally focused investors.
Thus, while Schwab dominates in absolute client assets and account scale, Interactive Brokers has the edge in growth momentum.
Competitive Edge: Interactive Brokers or SchwabInteractive Brokers’ proprietary technology infrastructure remains central to its investment case. Its highly automated platform allows it to provide trading across stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds and other products at relatively low costs.
Its international reach also provides a long runway for account growth. Unlike Schwab, whose franchise is predominantly U.S.-focused, Interactive Brokers generates a meaningful portion of its business overseas and continues to expand across new markets and products.
The company has also broadened its offerings to include cryptocurrency access and prediction markets, which could help deepen client engagement. Nonetheless, international expansion brings additional regulatory, political and foreign-exchange risks. New products could also raise compliance and operational costs.
Schwab's competitive advantage is different. Rather than targeting primarily active traders, the company has developed an extensive financial-services ecosystem catering to retail investors, registered investment advisers and wealth-management clients. This broader platform makes Schwab less dependent on transaction-based revenues and supports long-term asset retention.
SCHW or IBKR: Which Has a Better Earnings Potential?The Zacks Consensus Estimate for SCHW’s revenues implies an 18.3% and 12.1% year-over-year rise for 2026 and 2027, respectively. The company’s earnings are expected to grow 32.7% in 2026 and 21.2% in 2027. Earnings estimates for both years have moved higher over the past month.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The consensus mark for IBKR’s revenues suggests a year-over-year jump of 18% for 2026 and 13.3% for 2027. Also, the consensus estimate for earnings suggests a 22.8% and 18% increase for 2026 and 2027, respectively. Over the past 30 days, earnings estimates have been revised higher.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
SCHW vs. IBKR: Valuation Analysis and RisksValuation is particularly important when comparing the two stocks. Schwab is currently trading at a 12-month forward price-to-earnings (P/E) of 15.27X. Interactive Brokers stock, on the other hand, is currently trading at a 12-month forward P/E of 32.67X.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Interactive Brokers’ impressive growth profile has historically commanded a premium. Investors are effectively paying for sustained account growth, trading activity, technology advantages and global expansion. Hence, any slowdown in client additions or trading volumes could pressure the stock's valuation.
Schwab's risks include interest-rate sensitivity, client cash allocation trends, intense competition and exposure to market levels through asset-based fees. Nonetheless, its massive client asset base, diversified revenue streams and improving funding position provide significant earnings visibility.
IBKR also faces regulatory and geopolitical risks because of its international exposure. Also, expansion into newer products increases compliance complexity.
Schwab or Interactive Brokers: Which Brokerage Stock to Buy?So far this year, shares of Schwab and Interactive Brokers have gained 12.3% and 52.7%, respectively.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Interactive Brokers stands out for its superior account growth, scalable technology platform, rising client equity and extensive global footprint. These strengths should support continued revenue and earnings expansion.
Meanwhile, Schwab appears to offer a more balanced investment proposition. Its more than $13 trillion client asset base, strong organic asset gathering, diversified wealth-management ecosystem and improving balance sheet economics provide several avenues for earnings growth.
Therefore, while Interactive Brokers appears to be the stronger pure-growth story, Schwab looks better positioned from a risk-reward perspective, particularly if balance sheet normalization continues to support operating leverage. For investors seeking a combination of scale, earnings visibility and long-term growth potential, Schwab emerges as the better brokerage stock at present.
Currently, SCHW and IBKR carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) closed at $97.02 in the latest trading session, marking a -1.19% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.02% loss on the day. Elsewhere, the Dow lost 0.21%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 0.08%.
Coming into today, shares of the company had gained 8.01% in the past month. In that same time, the Finance sector gained 2.27%, while the S&P 500 gained 3.67%.
Market participants will be closely following the financial results of Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. in its upcoming release. It is anticipated that the company will report an EPS of $0.65, marking a 14.04% rise compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Meanwhile, the latest consensus estimate predicts the revenue to be $1.81 billion, indicating a 12.14% increase compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
For the entire fiscal year, the Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $2.69 per share and a revenue of $7.26 billion, representing changes of +22.83% and +18%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors might also notice recent changes to analyst estimates for Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. Recent revisions tend to reflect the latest near-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the business outlook.
Our research suggests that these changes in estimates have a direct relationship with upcoming stock price performance. Investors can capitalize on this by using the Zacks Rank. This model considers these estimate changes and provides a simple, actionable rating system.
The Zacks Rank system, spanning from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), boasts an impressive track record of outperformance, audited externally, with #1 ranked stocks yielding an average annual return of +25% since 1988. Within the past 30 days, our consensus EPS projection remained stagnant. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. is currently a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
Digging into valuation, Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. currently has a Forward P/E ratio of 36.5. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 14.62, so one might conclude that Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. is trading at a premium comparatively.
One should further note that IBKR currently holds a PEG ratio of 1.81. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. By the end of yesterday's trading, the Financial - Investment Bank industry had an average PEG ratio of 1.04.
The Financial - Investment Bank industry is part of the Finance sector. At present, this industry carries a Zacks Industry Rank of 33, placing it within the top 14% of over 250 industries.
The strength of our individual industry groups is measured by the Zacks Industry Rank, which is calculated based on the average Zacks Rank of the individual stocks within these groups. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Ensure to harness Zacks.com to stay updated with all these stock-shifting metrics, among others, in the next trading sessions.
The Zacks Investment Bank industry is poised to benefit from clarity on trade and monetary policy, a resilient economy and lower financing costs, which will likely support M&A and underwriting activities. Trading revenues are expected to stay robust as lingering geopolitical risks and macro uncertainty sustain market volatility and client engagement.
Rising investments in AI, technology and platforms could increase near-term expenses but should enhance long-term operating efficiency. So, industry players like Morgan Stanley (MS - Free Report) , The Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW - Free Report) and Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) are worth considering.
Industry Description The Zacks Investment Bank industry consists of firms that provide financial products and services, including advisory-based financial transactions to corporations, governments and financial institutions worldwide. These started as partnership firms focused on initial public offerings (IPOs), secondary equity offerings, brokerage and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Gradually, the companies have evolved into providers of various other services, including securities research, proprietary trading and investment management. Industry players work mainly through three product segments: investment banking (M&As, advisory services and securities underwriting), asset management and trading and principal investments (proprietary and brokerage trading).
Key Trends Shaping the Future of the Investment Bank Industry Underwriting and Advisory Businesses Momentum to Persist: Following a prolonged slump in underwriting, IPOs and deal-making since 2022 amid geopolitical tensions and macro uncertainty, investment banking activity has rebounded. Expectations of a pro-business Trump administration, deregulation and improving policy clarity are supporting advisory and underwriting pipelines. Recent industry trends point to a stronger 2026 M&A cycle, aided by strategic transformations, private-market activity, flexible capital solutions and faster deal execution, while IPO markets are reopening selectively.
A resilient economy, easing financing costs and renewed corporate confidence are expected to bolster M&A and capital-markets revenues. However, Middle East tensions, tariff-related uncertainty and still-selective investor demand could temper the pace of recovery. This evolving macro backdrop is setting the stage for continuous top-line growth for investment banks.
Trading Business to Remain Solid: Client activity in the trading business largely depends on the prevalent macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions. Since 2022, market volatility has increased significantly, largely due to several geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges. President Donald Trump’s tariff plans and ongoing geopolitical matters have upended the near-term normalization of the trading business.
Against this backdrop, market volatility and client engagement have remained elevated, keeping trading desks active across asset classes. As investors continue to reposition portfolios in response to policy uncertainty, rate movements and geopolitical developments, investment banks are likely to benefit from sustained trading volumes. Trading income is expected to remain solid in the upcoming period.
Technology to Improve Operating Efficiency: Innovative trading platforms, the use of AI and investments in technology and advertising will likely support investment banks. Industry players are attracting and retaining the best talent for building a leadership team and spending heavily on technology to support clients with infrastructure development and new platforms. While industry players are likely to face increasing technology-related expenses in the near term, these initiatives are expected to improve operating efficiency over time.
Zacks Industry Rank Suggests Bullish Stance The Zacks Investment Bank industry is a 21-stock group within the broader Zacks Finance sector. The industry currently carries a Zacks Industry Rank #32, which places it in the top 13% of more than 245 Zacks industries.
The group’s Zacks Industry Rank, which is the average of the Zacks Rank of all the member stocks, indicates solid near-term prospects. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1.
The industry’s positioning in the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries is a result of a robust earnings outlook for the constituent companies in aggregate. Looking at the aggregate earnings estimate revisions, it appears that analysts are gaining confidence in this group’s earnings growth potential. Over the past year, the industry’s earnings estimates for 2026 have been revised upward by 17.8%.
Before we present a few stocks that you may want to invest in, let’s take a look at the industry’s recent stock market performance and valuation picture.
Industry's Stock Market Performance Is Impressive The Zacks Investment Bank industry has outperformed its sector and the S&P 500 over the past two years. While stocks in the industry have collectively soared 72.6%, the S&P 500 composite has rallied 42.8%, and the Zacks Finance sector has risen 31.9%.
Two-Year Price Performance
Industry's Valuation Is Attractive One might get a good sense of the industry’s relative valuation by looking at its price-to-tangible book ratio (P/TBV), commonly used for valuing investment banks because of significant variations in their results from one quarter to the next.
The industry currently has a trailing 12-month P/TBV of 3.32X, above the median level of 2.26X over the past five years. The industry is trading at a considerable discount compared with the market at large, as the trailing 12-month P/TBV for the S&P 500 is 10.16X and the median level is 13.12X.
Price-to-Tangible Book Ratio (TTM)
Finance stocks typically have a lower P/TBV ratio, so comparing investment banks with the S&P 500 may not make sense to many investors. However, comparing the group’s P/TBV ratio with that of the broader sector ensures that the group is trading at a decent discount. The Zacks Finance sector’s trailing 12-month P/TBV of 6.10X and the median level of 4.87X for the same period are above the Zacks Investment Bank industry’s respective ratios.
Price-to-Tangible Book Ratio (TTM)
3 Investment Bank Stocks to Bet On Morgan Stanley: It operates globally as an investment banking, securities and investment management company. The key reason for this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company’s earnings stability is its business diversification initiatives. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
New York-based Morgan Stanley is gradually lowering its reliance on capital markets for income generation by expanding wealth and asset management and using acquisitions (Eaton Vance, E*Trade Financial, Shareworks and EquityZen) to broaden distribution. These moves have supported diversification and a more balanced revenue stream across market cycles. As of June 30, 2026, total client assets across the Wealth Management and Investment Management segments reached $10 trillion, meeting a major milestone. This progress reflects strong momentum across Morgan Stanley’s advisor-led, workplace and self-directed platforms, while highlighting its expanding scale in the retirement savings market.
MS’ partnership with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. will likely continue to support its profitability. In 2023, the companies announced plans to deepen their 15-year alliance by merging certain operations within their Japanese brokerage joint ventures. The move strengthens Morgan Stanley’s foothold in Japan. The company's global platform is increasingly relevant as capital markets activity broadens outside the United States and across Japan, India, China, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Continued investment in regional leadership and collaboration should support wallet share gains across Asia's capital markets and wealth opportunity set.
A favorable macroeconomic backdrop is expected to support the company’s IB business, further strengthening its top line. The demand for both advisory and underwriting businesses is likely to rise as corporates become more comfortable with the current economic backdrop. Momentum is expanding beyond the Americas into Asia and EMEA, while active M&A and IPO markets, together with the company’s strong competitive position, should support further growth as the macroeconomic backdrop evolves.
With a market cap of $337.5 billion, MS is expected to continue benefiting from its scale and business expansion efforts. Its shares have jumped 28.6% over the past six months. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 earnings implies a year-over-year rise of 25.3% and 2.1%, respectively.
Price and Consensus: MS
Schwab: With more than $13 trillion in total client assets and a dominant position in both retail brokerage and advisor custody, Schwab benefits from deep client relationships and recurring revenue streams. The company continues to build scale in advice and managed investing, which carries higher revenue per client asset than self-directed activity. This has been driving SCHW’s wealth and banking solutions inflows.
Prior acquisitions, including TD Ameritrade, USAA’s IMCO assets, Wasmer Schroeder and Motif, expanded distribution and product depth, and Forge Global added another capability layer in private markets. Schwab’s scale in both retail and RIA custody continues to translate into durable account growth and net new assets, even in volatile markets. The company continues to add financial consultants and wealth advisers and plans to open new branches. Over time, this mix shift should help Schwab monetize a growing base of client assets with less dependence on episodic trading cycles.
Schwab has moved beyond its AI roadmap into live client deployments, strengthening the potential for technology to deepen engagement and create new monetization avenues. Schwab expanded its digital capabilities with Portfolio Insights, a generative-AI tool for self-directed retail clients, and launched Schwab Crypto, offering direct Bitcoin and Ethereum access. It is also advancing AI-enabled client and advisor tools and invested $65 million in AI-powered wealth-management platform Wealth.com.
A key strength of Schwab is its diversified revenue base, which includes net interest income, asset management fees and advisory services. The company’s scale and trusted platform position it well to serve as a bridge between traditional finance and digital assets, especially as cryptocurrency adoption becomes increasingly mainstream.
With a market cap of $186.9 billion, Schwab is expected to benefit from strategic buyouts, a rise in investing solution fees and by leveraging AI to expand relationship-based business. Shares of this Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) company have risen 13.2% over the past six months. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 earnings indicates a jump of 32.7% and 21.2%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.
Price and Consensus: SCHW
Interactive Brokers: This Zacks Rank #2 company is a well-known fintech broker. The company’s biggest strength stems from its deep, multi-asset global market access, unmatched by most retail and even many institutionally focused competitors. IBKR enables clients to trade across more than 170 markets, dozens of currencies and a wide range of asset classes, including equities, options, futures, foreign exchange, bonds and funds, from a single unified platform.
Another strong aspect of IBKR is technological superiority. This has kept the company’s compensation expense relative to net revenues (9.8% in the first half of 2026) below its industry peers. It has been emphasizing the development of proprietary software to automate broker-dealer functions, leading to a steady rise in revenues. This cost discipline supports competitive pricing and reinvestment capacity as the client base grows.
Interactive Brokers continues to broaden its product suite and enhance platform capabilities, helping expand its addressable client base, deepen engagement and diversify fee-generating opportunities. The continued rollout of differentiated products should strengthen client retention, increase platform usage and create incremental revenue opportunities while helping Interactive Brokers remain competitive in the rapidly evolving electronic brokerage industry.
Interactive Brokers’ technological superiority, along with a more supportive regulatory environment that could improve product velocity, is expected to bolster net revenues by driving higher client acquisitions. Revenues are also likely to benefit from solid Daily Average Revenue Trades and a favorable trading backdrop supported by increased market participation. IBKR continues to scale its international platform to capture rising cross-border investing demand and wealth creation in emerging markets. Its expanding geographic and product footprint will likely support sustained account growth, diversify client activity across regions and strengthen long-term revenue opportunities.
With a market cap of $164.5 billion, Interactive Brokers is expected to continue benefiting from its business expansion efforts and favorable operating environment. Its shares have gained 34.7% over the past six months. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2026 and 2027 earnings indicates an increase of 22.8% and 18%, respectively, on a year-over-year basis.
Key Takeaways IBKR shares have risen 50.1% YTD, driven by strong results, client growth and elevated trading activity.IBKR's automated platform and product innovation support revenue growth and operating leverage.IBKR's global expansion and $7.7B cash position support long-term growth and shareholder return. Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) stock has gained strongly so far in 2026, aided by robust first-half results, accelerating client growth and elevated trading activity. IBKR shares have rallied 50.1%, outperforming the industry’s 11.3% growth and the S&P 500 Index’s 11.7% rise.
Moreover, IBKR’s price performance has been better than that of its close peers, Charles Schwab (SCHW - Free Report) and Tradeweb Markets Inc. (TW - Free Report) . The Schwab stock has gained 8.1% so far this year, whereas shares of Tradeweb Markets have appreciated only 0.5%.
YTD Price Performance
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Does the Interactive Brokers stock have more upside left despite showing recent strength in price? Let us dig into its fundamentals and growth prospects to get a clear picture.
What’s Supporting Interactive Brokers?Technology-Driven Operating Leverage: IBKR’s position at the intersection of the long-running shift toward electronic trading and growing demand for global, multi-asset investing remains a key strength. Its highly automated platform provides access to stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds and digital assets across more than 170 market centers in 40 countries and 29 currencies, allowing the company to expand volumes and its geographic reach without a proportionate increase in operating costs.
Unlike many peers, compensation expenses were 9.8% of net revenues in the first half of 2026, reflecting the efficiency of its technology-led operating model.
The company’s continued investment in proprietary software and automation has supported strong and consistent revenue growth. Total net revenues saw a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% over 2020-2025, driven by higher interest income, commissions and ongoing business expansion. This momentum continued in the first half of 2026, aided by robust trading activity and sustained client engagement.
Revenue Trend
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Going forward, solid daily average revenue trade levels, continued account growth and a favorable trading backdrop should support revenue expansion and reinforce the scalability of the company’s technology-driven platform.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for IBKR’s 2026 and 2027 revenues is $7.26 billion and $8.23 billion, which indicates year-over-year growth of 18% and 13.4%, respectively.
Revenue Growth Estimates
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Continued Product Innovation: Interactive Brokers continues to broaden its product suite and enhance platform capabilities, helping expand its addressable client base, deepen engagement and diversify fee-generating opportunities.
So far this year, the company has expanded its cryptocurrency offering by adding nine tokens through zerohash and three through Paxos, while enabling eligible clients to transfer funds to external wallets through stablecoins. It also launched a unified prediction-markets interface that allows eligible clients to compare and trade contracts across Kalshi, CME Group and ForecastEx from a single platform.
Interactive Brokers has rapidly expanded its AI capabilities. After initially integrating Anthropic’s Claude, it added ChatGPT and Grok and subsequently opened connectivity to virtually any AI application supporting the Model Context Protocol, enabling clients to use their preferred AI tools for portfolio analysis, research and trade-instruction generation. These initiatives build on stablecoin funding, expanded derivatives access and existing tools such as Ask IBKR and AI-powered research features.
The continued rollout of differentiated products should strengthen client retention, increase platform use and create incremental revenue opportunities while helping Interactive Brokers remain competitive in the rapidly evolving electronic brokerage industry.
Expanding Global Footprint: Interactive Brokers continues to broaden its international platform to capitalize on rising cross-border investing and wealth creation across emerging and developed markets. So far in 2026, the company has expanded market access by enabling eligible clients to trade Romanian equities on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, Korean equities through the Korea Exchange and Nextrade, and Brazilian futures.
It also introduced a funding solution for Latin American clients through its collaboration with Paysafe’s SafetyPay. These initiatives build on its 2025 expansion into Brazilian and UAE equities, broader access to Bursa Malaysia and continued growth efforts across Taiwan, Mexico, India and Europe.
IBKR has also widened its digital-asset footprint, extending cryptocurrency trading beyond Hong Kong to the U.K. A broader geographic and product reach should attract clients, deepen engagement among existing customers and diversify trading activity across markets, supporting sustained account and revenue growth over the long term.
Strong Balance Sheet & Shareholder Returns: Interactive Brokers maintains a solid capital position while steadily enhancing shareholder returns. In April 2026, the company raised its quarterly dividend 9.4%, following increases of 28% in 2025 and 150% in 2024, underscoring management’s confidence in its earnings and cash-generation capacity.
Its June 2025 four-for-one stock split also improved share accessibility without affecting underlying fundamentals. The company relies on minimal debt to fund operations and ended the second quarter of 2026 with $7.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
This strong liquidity position provides ample flexibility to meet regulatory capital requirements, fund technology and platform investments, and continue returning capital to shareholders over time.
What’s Hurting IBKR’s Growth?Elevated Expense Base: Non-interest expenses have trended higher over time as Interactive Brokers invests in product expansion, technology and distribution. While expenses declined in 2025, the metric witnessed a CAGR of 8.3% over the last five years (2020-2025). The increase has primarily been due to higher execution, clearing and distribution fees. The uptrend persisted in the first half of 2026.
Expense Trend
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Continued investments in franchises, the launch of products and services, higher marketing spend, and the upgrade of technology are expected to keep expenses elevated as the platform expands and regulation evolves.
Geographic & Regulatory Risks: Interactive Brokers’ extensive global presence exposes it to regulatory, political, currency and economic risks across multiple jurisdictions, with more than 35% of net revenues generated from overseas operations.
Differences in local regulations, foreign exchange volatility and uneven economic conditions can affect trading activity and profitability. Continued expansion into newer offerings such as cryptocurrencies and prediction markets may increase compliance requirements, technology investment and operational complexity.
These factors could raise costs and weigh on margins, particularly as the company continues expanding across markets with evolving regulatory frameworks.
Final Thoughts on IBKR StockInteractive Brokers remains well-positioned for growth in the current volatile operating environment. While the company’s profitability is expected to be hampered because of elevated expenses, its strong technological capabilities and diversified product offerings enhance its global reach, supporting long-term growth.
Also, rapidly evolving trends will benefit the company’s revenues and expand its market share.
Over the past 60 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s 2026 and 2027 earnings has moved upward. The estimates reflect year-over-year growth rates of 22.8% and 18% for 2026 and 2027, respectively.
Earnings Estimate Revision
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The upward earnings estimate revisions reflect that analysts are optimistic regarding IBKR’s earnings growth potential. Thus, it seems to be a wise idea to invest in the stock now.
At present, IBKR sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Bull markets affect not only stock prices but also some underlying businesses in the economy. For instance, trading brokerages -- like Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.73%) -- earn more revenue if more people around the globe trade their equities.
The bull market that began in late 2022 helped Interactive Brokers' stock generate a total return of over 525% in the last five years. That performance is actually crushing the performance of most technology and artificial intelligence (AI) stocks over the same time period.
But what happens when trading eventually slows? Let's discuss the dynamics of the financial brokerage sector and what it could mean for Interactive Brokers investors today.
Image source: Getty Images.
Revenue is built on trading volumes Interactive Brokers (IBKR) is a global financial asset trading platform. It makes money whenever a customer trades a stock, options, cryptocurrencies, or other financial assets. The more customers it has and the more trades each customer makes, the more money it will make.
The AI-driven bull market has been quite kind to IBKR's growth. Its total customers grew 34% year over year last quarter to 5.19 million, resulting in 30% growth in commission revenue. It also generates net interest income on cash balances and margin loans, which were up 23% year over year.
Profitability is also stellar, with a pretax profit margin of 77% last quarter. IBKR's stock price is up 506% in the last five years due to this stellar profit margin and the fact that it has been able to grow its customer accounts by 5x from around 1 million in 2020. This was helped by its improved product offering for international trading, as well as by the bull market during the pandemic and in the last few years around AI.
Cyclicality is the price of doing business A market-share-gaining stock brokerage like IBKR is likely to deliver fantastic financial performance in a bull market. Bear markets are not so kind. Sure, trading is still going on, but when stock prices fall, it generally means some individual traders exit the market, and trading volume falls. This turns a previous tailwind into a headwind for as long as stocks remain in the doldrums.
This is the business cycle for IBKR, and a bear market will eventually arrive. In 2022, when stocks were in a bear market amid interest rate hikes and recession fears, IBKR's customer account balance was nearly flat, underscoring how macroeconomic forces can affect its business. Still, the fact that it was able to stabilize its business during a bear market is a testament to its market share gains.
Data by YCharts. PE = price-to-earnings.
Should you buy IBKR stock? When evaluating brokerage stocks, one also needs to factor in interest rates and how they can affect cash being kept in brokerage accounts. How rates average out through both types of markets will help determine a brokerage's true long-term earnings.
For instance, more assets on the platform at IBKR have meant a growth in net interest income. And yet, this net interest income is currently growing more slowly than the overall customer count. This is because interest rates are down globally in the last year, meaning IBKR doesn't earn as much in interest income on idle cash balances. In a bear market, interest rates are likely to fall, which could affect the business's earnings growth.
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Another factor to consider is stock valuation. IBKR stock currently trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 38.5, and this is valuing it on trailing earnings in a multi-year bull market. If a bear market occurs and lasts for years, IBKR's customers, net interest income, and likely overall earnings may fall temporarily. This could make it a dangerous investment to buy at a P/E ratio close to 40.
That's why it's important to make any decision on IBKR stock with a long-term investment view. IBKR should continue gaining market share over the long term, which is why the stock trades at such a premium earnings multiple today. I don't think it is smart to buy into the stock at this premium P/E ratio, but investors should keep it on the watch list to see if it ever gets cheap again. That's when a long-term investment might make sense.
CBOE Global Markets (CBOE -1.11%) reported record revenues in the second quarter of 2026, up 25% year over year. Earnings rose 50%. And a key driver was record trading volume. That's great for CBOE, but that same Wall Street enthusiasm has been helping discount brokers Robinhood (HOOD -5.01%) and Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.73%).
Only, these discount brokers aren't going down the same path as businesses. Here's a key difference that may affect which discount broker you choose to buy.
Image source: Getty Images.
Direct competitors with slightly different models Robinhood and Interactive Brokers are competitors. However, they are focused on different subsets of the market. Robinhood is looking to attract newer investors, while Interactive Brokers is targeting more experienced investors. Right now, each company is doing very well amid a long bull market and expanding trading opportunities for investors, including things like cryptocurrencies and prediction markets.
To put some numbers on it, Robinhood saw transaction-based revenues jump 44% year over year in the second quarter of 2026. Interactive Brokers' commission revenues increased 30%. That difference isn't shocking, since Robinhood customers are likely younger, which may make them more active traders and more attuned to hot trading themes, like prediction markets. However, there's a more important difference when you examine two other revenue sources.
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Robinhood's interest income rose 9% year over year, and its "other" income increased 54%. Other income includes the revenue from its Gold subscriptions. By contrast, Interactive Brokers' interest income rose 23%, while its "other" income jumped 40%. Interactive Brokers does not offer a subscription service similar to Robinhood. However, Interactive Brokers does a lot more on the interest side, more aggressively supporting traders who use margin and paying attractive interest rates on idle cash (earning spread income). To put a specific number on that, Robinhood had interest income of $389 million, compared with roughly $1.06 billion for Interactive Brokers. That's a big difference.
The implications of the model differences Margin loans and cash are clearly boosting Interactive Brokers' performance today. But there's a downside to consider. If there is a bear market and its customers reduce their margin debt, either by choice or due to margin calls, the company's interest income will begin to shrink. That could exacerbate the hit if a downturn also reduces trading volumes, thereby reducing transaction revenues.
To be fair, Robinhood wouldn't be immune to the impact of reduced trading volumes. However, its use of a subscription service could help protect some of the revenue it generates in the "other" category. Subscriptions tend to produce fairly resilient revenues. In a market downturn, that could make Robinhood's business more resilient than Interactive Brokers'.
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There is the risk that the new investors Robinhood tends to target simply stop investing, which shouldn't be overlooked, as it could leave the company with fewer customers. However, it seems likely that Gold subscriptions are tied to the more experienced customers it serves. Those clients are likely to stick around through a downturn.
Which model wins? There hasn't been a really deep bear market since the Great Recession, so it is hard to tell if Robinhood or Interactive Brokers has the better model. In fact, Interactive Brokers went public in 2007, at the start of that downturn, while Robinhood held its IPO in 2021, well after it was over. Those IPO dates make it difficult to use that downturn as a guidepost, as you could with a discount peer like Charles Schwab (SCHW +1.95%), which has been public for much longer.
That said, it is likely that Interactive Brokers' approach will lead to more volatility in its financial results. The good years will probably be really good, while the bad years could be really bad, as both transaction and interest revenues both dry up at the same time. For some, that may make Robinhood's attempt to build a subscription business a more attractive choice, even though the resilience of its subscription revenue stream has yet to be tested by a deep and prolonged market pullback.
Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced a strategic collaboration with Daol Investment & Securities to provide eligible Korean investors with cost-effective access to global equities through Daol's platform, supported by IBKR's advanced trading infrastructure.
The collaboration highlights Interactive Brokers' strength as a provider of brokerage technology and white-label solutions for introducing brokers worldwide. By leveraging IBKR's sophisticated trading infrastructure, Daol can offer clients an enhanced investing experience.
"We are pleased to work with Daol to help expand access to global equities for Korean investors," said David Friedland, Managing Director for APAC at Interactive Brokers. "Our powerful technology, competitive pricing and broad global market access can help institutions worldwide optimize business operations and better serve their clients."
BC Lee, Chairman of Daol Investment & Securities, added: “This initiative with IBKR is intended to provide Korean investors with a new investment experience directly connected to a global securities infrastructure. Through a comprehensive collaboration that includes expanding accessible markets, derivatives, and direct investment services in the Korean market for overseas investors, we plan to develop this into a long-term, two-way global investment platform.”
IBKR Brokerage Services for Introducing Brokers, includes:
Powerful trading technology and tools to trade products on over 170 markets.Real-time market risk management and monitoring to help firms measure and manage risk exposure.Competitive pricing with no ticket charges or minimums and no technology, software, platform or reporting fees.The best-informed investors choose Interactive Brokers.
About Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.:
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: IBKR) is a member of the S&P 500. Its affiliates provide automated trade execution and custody of securities, commodities, foreign exchange, and prediction markets around the clock on over 170 markets in numerous countries and currencies from a single unified platform to clients worldwide. We serve individual investors, hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, financial advisors and introducing brokers. Our four decades of focus on technology and automation have enabled us to equip our clients with a uniquely sophisticated platform to manage their investment portfolios. We strive to provide our clients with advantageous execution prices and trading, risk and portfolio management tools, research facilities and investment products, all at low or no cost, positioning them to achieve superior returns on investments. Interactive Brokers has consistently earned recognition as a top broker, garnering multiple awards and accolades from respected industry sources such as Barron's, Investopedia, Stockbrokers.com, and many others.
Follow Interactive Brokers on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260824429329/en/
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #IBKR--Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced a strategic collaboration with Daol Investment & Securities to provide eligible Korean investors with cost-effective access to global equities through Daol's platform, supported by IBKR's advanced trading infrastructure. The collaboration highlights Interactive Brokers' strength as a provider of brokerage technology and white-label solutions for introducing brokers worldwide. B.
Key Takeaways IBKR is expanding its product set with tokens, prediction markets and AI-powered research tools. ROKU's ad revenue rose 24.8% year over year in Q2 2026, while ad gross margin reached 62.4%.BTSG posted broad growth as scale, mix and technology investments supported margin expansion. Wall Street has been witnessing an astonishing rally since the beginning of 2023, barring some minor fluctuations. The rally has primarily been driven by the global artificial intelligence (AI) technology boom. Generative and agentic AI have transformed the entire landscape of the information technology sector worldwide.
Consequently, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 43.4%, 28.6% and 20.4%, respectively, in 2023, 2024 and 2025. This trend has continued this year too. The AI momentum is rock-solid and has been expanding the periphery, scale and magnitude day by day. As a result, the tech-heavy index is up 12.7% year to date.
Despite the fact that the Nasdaq Composite is a tech-laden index, several non-tech Nasdaq-listed stocks have skyrocketed this year, aside from large technology behemoths. Investment in these stocks with a favorable Zacks Rank should be fruitful in the remaining part of 2026.
Three such non-tech Nasdaq Composite-listed stocks are: Interactive Brokers Group Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) , Roku Inc. (ROKU - Free Report) and BrightSpring Health Services Inc. (BTSG - Free Report) . Each of our picks currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
The chart below shows the price performance of our three picks year to date.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Interactive Brokers Group Inc.Interactive Brokers continues to benefit from a widening product set that keeps clients engaged across cycles. IBKR’s automated platform, broad product set and new launches should support top-line growth across market cycles.
Global reach, a conservative balance sheet and focus on direct market should lead to support competitive pricing for IBKR and help attract active traders and long-term investors. Interactive Brokers continues to add features that widen its addressable client base and deepen wallet share.
IBKR has added nine new tokens for trading through zerohash and three new tokens through Paxos, while introducing the ability to transfer funds to external wallets via stablecoin.
Also, IBKR has added two platform enhancements: a single screen for trading prediction-market contracts across Kalshi, CME and ForecastEx, and AI integration with Anthropic’s Claude for research and navigation (building on which, it added ChatGPT and Grok to its suite of products).
Interactive Brokers has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 18% and 22.8%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year’s earnings has improved 1.9% over the last 30 days.
Roku Inc.Roku continues to benefit from the shift of viewing and advertising budgets from linear television to streaming, with Platform revenue growth supported by Advertising and Subscriptions. ROKU’s scale of more than 100 million streaming households, broader programmatic reach and expanding subscription offering support continued monetization of the Roku Experience.
The new Home Screen and AI-powered search could further improve content discovery, retention and advertising opportunities as the rollout expands. ROKU is broadening its advertising model across programmatic demand, enterprise campaigns and self-service tools. Advertising revenue increased 24.8% year over year in the second quarter of 2026 to $672.8 million, while advertising gross margin rose to 62.4%.
ROKU has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 18.2% and more than 100%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year’s earnings has improved 13.6% over the last 30 days.
BrightSpring Health Services Inc.BrightSpring Health’s integrated pharmacy and provider platform continues to benefit from care migration into lower-cost home and community settings. Second-quarter 2026 results reflected broad growth, with adjusted EBITDA rising faster than revenues as scale, mix, operating discipline and technology investments supported margin expansion.
BTSG’s Specialty and Infusion remains the primary growth engine, while Provider Services is gaining from census growth, de novos and acquired branch integration. BTSG’s margin improvement should be supported by operating efficiencies, a favorable business mix and greater automation across the platform.
BrightSpring Health has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 18.2% and 82%, respectively, for the current year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year’s earnings has improved 8.3% over the last 30 days.
In July, Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.76%) proved yet again that it is one of the fastest-growing brokerages in the world. Customer margin loans surpassed $100 billion in July, and were up 49% year over year.
This indicates that the animal spirits of the bull market are in full swing and that Interactive Brokers is capturing significant market share in the financial asset trading space. Here's why the electronic broker's margin debt has grown so quickly, and what it means for earnings this quarter.
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Growing customers means growing interest income In July, the total number of Interactive Brokers customers grew 34% year over year to 5.3 million. The company is attracting increasingly sophisticated customers and professionals to its platform due to its global coverage of financial assets and its low margin-debt rates.
Margin loans offer a way for a brokerage's customers to bet more aggressively on stocks, as well as the interest charged on short-selling. When the customer base grows, so too will Interactive Brokers' total margin debt. In fact, last month, it grew much faster than the overall customer count, likely due to aggressive trading in the artificial intelligence (AI) market.
Margin debt growing by 49% year over year is going to provide a huge boost to the company's net interest income in Q3, at least, if it continues to grow this quickly in August and September. Last quarter, net interest income grew 23% year over year to $1.06 billion. At this rate of margin debt growth, Interactive Brokers should see an acceleration in net interest income growth this quarter.
Image source: Getty Images.
Should you buy Interactive Brokers stock? One potential headwind to Interactive Brokers' net interest income would be a decline in interest rates. The company charges interest on clients' margin loans at a variable rate based on standardized cost-of-borrowing benchmarks such as the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR). In the last two years, the Federal Reserve has begun to lower its benchmark interest rates, which is a headwind for the company's net interest income.
Depending on where interest rates head over the next few years, they will be either a headwind or a tailwind for the low-cost broker's net interest income, which provides the majority of its revenue. Today, the stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 36, which indicates that investors do not believe interest rates will fall in the near future, and that they anticipate that Interactive Brokers will continue to grow its total customer count at a similar pace to previous years. If they are correct on both counts, then Interactive Brokers stock will probably prove a good buy at today's levels.
Brett Schafer has positions in Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $43.75 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $46.25 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The recommendations of Wall Street analysts are often relied on by investors when deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold a stock. Media reports about these brokerage-firm-employed (or sell-side) analysts changing their ratings often affect a stock's price. Do they really matter, though?
Before we discuss the reliability of brokerage recommendations and how to use them to your advantage, let's see what these Wall Street heavyweights think about Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) .
Interactive Brokers currently has an average brokerage recommendation (ABR) of 1.20, on a scale of 1 to 5 (Strong Buy to Strong Sell), calculated based on the actual recommendations (Buy, Hold, Sell, etc.) made by 10 brokerage firms. An ABR of 1.20 approximates between Strong Buy and Buy.
Of the 10 recommendations that derive the current ABR, nine are Strong Buy, representing 90% of all recommendations.
Brokerage Recommendation Trends for IBKR
Check price target & stock forecast for Interactive Brokers here>>>
The ABR suggests buying Interactive Brokers, but making an investment decision solely on the basis of this information might not be a good idea. According to several studies, brokerage recommendations have little to no success guiding investors to choose stocks with the most potential for price appreciation.
Do you wonder why? As a result of the vested interest of brokerage firms in a stock they cover, their analysts tend to rate it with a strong positive bias. According to our research, brokerage firms assign five "Strong Buy" recommendations for every "Strong Sell" recommendation.
This means that the interests of these institutions are not always aligned with those of retail investors, giving little insight into the direction of a stock's future price movement. It would therefore be best to use this information to validate your own analysis or a tool that has proven to be highly effective at predicting stock price movements.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool, the Zacks Rank, which classifies stocks into five groups, ranging from Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) to Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), is a reliable indicator of a stock's near-term price performance. So, validating the Zacks Rank with ABR could go a long way in making a profitable investment decision.
ABR Should Not Be Confused With Zacks RankIn spite of the fact that Zacks Rank and ABR both appear on a scale from 1 to 5, they are two completely different measures.
The ABR is calculated solely based on brokerage recommendations and is typically displayed with decimals (example: 1.28). In contrast, the Zacks Rank is a quantitative model allowing investors to harness the power of earnings estimate revisions. It is displayed in whole numbers -- 1 to 5.
Analysts employed by brokerage firms have been and continue to be overly optimistic with their recommendations. Since the ratings issued by these analysts are more favorable than their research would support because of the vested interest of their employers, they mislead investors far more often than they guide.
In contrast, the Zacks Rank is driven by earnings estimate revisions. And near-term stock price movements are strongly correlated with trends in earnings estimate revisions, according to empirical research.
In addition, the different Zacks Rank grades are applied proportionately to all stocks for which brokerage analysts provide current-year earnings estimates. In other words, this tool always maintains a balance among its five ranks.
There is also a key difference between the ABR and Zacks Rank when it comes to freshness. When you look at the ABR, it may not be up-to-date. Nonetheless, since brokerage analysts constantly revise their earnings estimates to reflect changing business trends, and their actions get reflected in the Zacks Rank quickly enough, it is always timely in predicting future stock prices.
Should You Invest in IBKR?In terms of earnings estimate revisions for Interactive Brokers, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has increased 5.6% over the past month to $2.69.
Analysts' growing optimism over the company's earnings prospects, as indicated by strong agreement among them in revising EPS estimates higher, could be a legitimate reason for the stock to soar in the near term.
The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) for Interactive Brokers. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>
Therefore, the Buy-equivalent ABR for Interactive Brokers may serve as a useful guide for investors.
Automated global broker Interactive Brokers (IBKR) has integrated Paysafe's SafetyPay to enable eligible IBKR clients in Latin America to fund their IBKR accounts directly from personal bank accounts in local currencies, IBKR said in a Tuesday (Aug. 18) press release.
The financial world changed when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022 to combat inflation. Some firms -- like the now-shuttered Silicon Valley Bank -- were ill-prepared for this interest rate rise. Others, like Interactive Brokers (IBKR -4.00%), had balance sheets ready to capitalize on rising rates.
Last quarter, IBKR's customer equity rose 40% to $930 billion, making it one of the fastest-growing brokerages in the world by asset value. Here's how it can capitalize on today's interest rates to generate earnings for shareholders.
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Exploding net interest income As a brokerage, IBKR earns interest income in a few ways. First, it can invest idle cash balances in short-term Treasury bonds, sharing some of the proceeds with customers before pocketing the rest. Second, it earns interest income by making margin loans to customers, backed by customers' equity, as well as short-sale loans.
Even though IBKR offers strong profit sharing on idle cash and low-margin loans compared to the competition, it is still printing gobs of interest income at today's interest rates. Its net interest income rose from $1.148 billion in 2021 to $3.56 billion in 2025, driven by growing customer account balances and rising interest rates, which allowed it to earn more per customer.
Last quarter, net interest income was $1.06 billion, up 23% year over year. It is actually the largest revenue segment for IBKR.
Image source: Getty Images.
Balancing long-term growth IBKR's stock price went up by 500% in the last five years, much of which is due to the explosion in net interest income feeding through to the bottom line. For any shareholder today, there is a risk that this tailwind over the last few years will turn into a headwind if interest rates fall.
At the same time, IBKR has a fantastic growth opportunity to attract more customers to its platform, which can offset any interest-income headwinds. Total customers grew 34% year over year last quarter to 5.19 million, with daily active revenue trades (DARTs) up 36%. Commission revenue grew 30% year over year to $673 million, which is highly correlated with customer and DART growth.
With its superior global trading platform, IBKR should steadily attract new customers in the years ahead. However, the company is currently trading at an elevated valuation, with a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 37 in a time when interest income may be higher than normal. For this reason, investors should avoid buying IBKR stock for the time being.
Brett Schafer has positions in Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $43.75 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $46.25 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #IBKR--Interactive Brokers announced a new funding solution for IBKR clients in Latin America, through a collaboration with Paysafe's SafetyPay.
Key Takeaways IBKR, CHEF, and ROKU have all had a great year as growth remains rock-solid. Growth is expected to remain robust, with Zacks Consensus estimates reflecting positivity. Each currently sports a highly-favorable Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Growth investing is widely popular, a strategy that largely focuses on targeting companies expected to grow their earnings and revenues at above-average rates. It’s a development that commonly leads to outperformance.
Of course, investors should also be aware of the increased volatility these stocks can face, as unforeseen circumstances can quickly hamper their forecasted growth rates.
For those seeking a group of strong growth stocks, Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) , Roku (ROKU - Free Report) , and The Chefs’ Warehouse (CHEF - Free Report) could all be considerations. In addition to solid forecasted growth, all three sport a favorable Zacks Rank, reflecting bullish earnings estimate revisions.
Each has shown strong momentum throughout 2026 so far, all outperforming relative to the S&P 500.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
IBKR Benefits From Growing Customer BaseInteractive Brokers Group is an automated global electronic brokerage firm providing trade execution, clearing, and custody services to individual and institutional investors. EPS revisions remain bullish across the board, with the stock sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Growth is expected to remain rock-solid for IBKR, with current Zacks Consensus estimates suggesting 18% revenue growth on 23% higher earnings in its current fiscal year, with FY27 estimates suggesting 13% revenue growth on 18% higher earnings.
Interactive Brokers is seeing continued growth as it expands its customer base and overall trading activity remains hot. Higher trading volumes increase commissions, while growing customer balances support net interest income.
CHEF Gains Market ShareThe Chefs’ Warehouse, a current Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), is a specialty food distributor serving primarily independent restaurants, fine-dining establishments, hotels, country clubs, and other culinary customers. EPS revisions have seen notable strength over recent months.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The growth outlook remains bullish, underpinned by its current Style Score of ‘A’ for Growth. Our consensus estimates suggest 10.5% revenue growth on 34% higher earnings in its current fiscal year, with FY27 estimates alluding to 8.3% and 23% revenue and earnings growth, respectively.
CHEF’s current growth momentum is being fueled by market share gains, the addition of new foodservice clients, and increased sales of its products to existing customers.
ROKU Increasingly Monetizes Customer BaseRoku, another Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), is a TV streaming technology and advertising company whose Roku OS powers streaming devices and smart TVs. Its business spans its Platform segment, which monetizes viewers through advertising, content distribution, and subscriptions, and its Devices segment, which includes streaming players, Roku-branded TVs, and other hardware.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Roku boasts the most positive growth outlook of the trio, with estimates for its current fiscal year suggesting 18% revenue growth on 366% higher earnings. The growth trajectory continues in FY27, with revenue expected to climb 13.7% paired with 41% earnings growth.
Roku’s growth story is being driven by stronger monetization of its large streaming audience, with Advertising, Subscription, and Platform results all showing momentum. Importantly, continued growth in Roku-powered TVs expands the installed base, creating more opportunities to monetize viewers.
Bottom Line
Above-average earnings and revenue growth commonly lead to share outperformance, precisely what we’ve seen with Roku (ROKU - Free Report) , Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) , and The Chefs’ Warehouse (CHEF - Free Report) throughout 2026.
In addition to strong growth, all three sport a favorable Zacks Rank, reflecting bullish earnings estimate revisions, which are the strongest driver of outperformance.
Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced a new funding solution for IBKR clients in Latin America, through a collaboration with Paysafe’s SafetyPay. The integration expands IBKR's range of funding methods and reinforces its commitment to providing fast, simple, and cost-effective account funding services for clients in the region.
SafetyPay allows eligible clients in Latin America to fund their IBKR accounts directly from personal bank accounts in local currencies, simplifying the path from deposit to investing. Once accounts are funded, clients can readily access IBKR's full range of products, including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds, and more across over 170 global markets from a single unified platform.
“Funding an account should be straightforward,” said Milan Galik, Chief Executive Officer of Interactive Brokers. “SafetyPay gives clients in Latin America a simple way to transfer funds from their local bank accounts and quickly access the global markets available through IBKR. We will continue to improve the funding experience by adding practical local solutions that make it easier for clients to invest.”
For additional information, please visit: Account Funding
The best-informed investors choose Interactive Brokers.
About Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.:
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: IBKR) is a member of the S&P 500. Its affiliates provide automated trade execution and custody of securities, commodities, foreign exchange, and prediction markets around the clock on over 170 markets in numerous countries and currencies from a single unified platform to clients worldwide. We serve individual investors, hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, financial advisors and introducing brokers. Our four decades of focus on technology and automation have enabled us to equip our clients with a uniquely sophisticated platform to manage their investment portfolios. We strive to provide our clients with advantageous execution prices and trading, risk and portfolio management tools, research facilities and investment products, all at low or no cost, positioning them to achieve superior returns on investments. Interactive Brokers has consistently earned recognition as a top broker, garnering multiple awards and accolades from respected industry sources such as Barron's, Investopedia, Stockbrokers.com, and many others.
Follow Interactive Brokers on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260818904999/en/
[url="]Interactive Brokers[/url] (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced access to the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB). This expansion offers
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #IBKR--Interactive Brokers an automated global broker, today announced access to the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BVB).
Key Takeaways Interactive Brokers' July DARTs rose 27% year over year to 4.43 million amid elevated market volatility.IBKR added 131,800 net new accounts in July, up 43% year over year, lifting total accounts to 5.32 million.IBKR shares rose 36% in three months, while 2026 and 2027 earnings estimates were revised higher. Last week, Interactive Brokers (IBKR - Free Report) reported robust operating metrics for July 2026, highlighted by strong growth in client trading activity and account additions.
Total client Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) reached 4.43 million in July, up 27% from the prior-year period. The increase reflects heightened trading activity amid elevated volatility across equities, options and global futures markets. Shifting expectations around the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, greater index dispersion and macro-driven portfolio repositioning also encouraged retail and professional investors to trade more actively, providing a meaningful boost to IBKR’s transaction volumes.
Beyond a favorable trading backdrop, Interactive Brokers continues to benefit from company-specific strengths. Its low-cost structure, competitive margin rates, ongoing product enhancements, streamlined account-opening process and highly efficient operating model are supporting strong client acquisition. In July, net new accounts surged 43% year over year to 131,800 and total accounts touched 5.32 million, further expanding the company’s client base.
IBKR is also broadening its addressable market by adding new products and capabilities designed to deepen client engagement and increase wallet share. At the same time, the company continues to expand its international platform, positioning itself to capitalize on growing cross-border investing activity and wealth creation across global markets.
These factors have supported sustained revenue growth. Interactive Brokers’ total net revenues recorded a CAGR of 22.8% over 2020-2025, aided by higher interest income, commission revenues and continued business expansion. With trading activity remaining healthy, client accounts increasing and engagement levels staying strong, IBKR appears well-positioned to sustain revenue momentum in the coming quarters.
IBKR Peers’ Business Diversification EffortsIBKR’s key competitors, Charles Schwab (SCHW - Free Report) and Robinhood Markets, Inc. (HOOD - Free Report) , have also been rolling out products and services to bolster market share.
Schwab is diversifying beyond brokerage through wealth management, banking, asset management, lending and alternative investments. This is broadening Schwab’s revenue base and deepening client relationships. These offerings attract more assets and encourage clients to consolidate finances on its platform, supporting higher engagement and creating additional opportunities for trading activity.
Robinhood is diversifying beyond traditional stock trading through crypto, retirement, credit cards, advisory services, prediction markets and international expansion. This broader ecosystem attracts new customers and assets while increasing platform engagement, creating cross-selling opportunities at Robinhood. This is supporting higher trading activity across equities, options, futures and digital assets.
IBKR’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimate AnalysisShares of Interactive Brokers have rallied 17% in the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 12.6%.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
From a valuation standpoint, IBKR trades at a forward 12-month price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 29.43, well above the industry average of 14.02.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Interactive Brokers’ 2026 and 2027 earnings indicates year-over-year growth of 22.8% and 18%, respectively. Over the past 30 days, earnings estimates have been revised upward to $2.69 for 2026 and $3.17 for 2027.
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Currently, Interactive Brokers sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced that eligible clients outside of Brazil can now trade Brazilian futures in addition to equities through the B3 exchange. Interactive Brokers was the first broker to provide international investors with streamlined, low-cost access to B3.
"The addition of B3 futures allows our clients to engage with a dynamic and fast-growing economy within the same unified experience they rely on to trade across markets worldwide" - Milan Galik, CEO of Interactive Brokers
Share Offering Brazilian futures and equities alongside products across more than 170 markets worldwide underscores IBKR’s commitment to broadening global market access and giving clients efficient, cost-effective ways to diversify through a single, unified platform. Access to B3 provides exposure to one of Latin America’s most active and liquid markets, providing long-term growth potential across multiple sectors and another way for investors to pursue emerging market opportunities.
"Global investors deserve seamless, low-cost access to the world's most compelling markets, including emerging economies shaping tomorrow's financial landscape," said Milan Galik, Chief Executive Officer of Interactive Brokers. "As the first broker to bring streamlined access to Brazil's B3 Exchange to international investors, we remain committed to expanding the boundaries of global investing. The addition of B3 futures allows our clients to engage with a dynamic and fast-growing economy within the same unified experience they rely on to trade across markets worldwide."
IBKR clients now have direct access to both Brazilian futures and equities, plus over 170 markets worldwide through powerful trading platforms and tools. This expansion reflects IBKR's ongoing commitment to delivering efficient, low-cost access to global opportunities.
For more information, please visit:
B3 Exchange – US and countries served by IB LLC
B3 Exchange – Canada
B3 Exchange – United Kingdom
B3 Exchange – Europe
B3 Exchange – Australia
B3 Exchange – Hong Kong
B3 Exchange – Singapore
Product availability varies by Interactive Brokers affiliate and client country of residence. Access to Brazil’s B3 exchange through Interactive Brokers is not available to residents of Brazil.
The best-informed investors choose Interactive Brokers.
About Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.:
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: IBKR) is a member of the S&P 500. Its affiliates provide automated trade execution and custody of securities, commodities, foreign exchange, and prediction markets around the clock on over 170 markets in numerous countries and currencies from a single unified platform to clients worldwide. We serve individual investors, hedge funds, proprietary trading groups, financial advisors and introducing brokers. Our four decades of focus on technology and automation have enabled us to equip our clients with a uniquely sophisticated platform to manage their investment portfolios. We strive to provide our clients with advantageous execution prices and trading, risk and portfolio management tools, research facilities and investment products, all at low or no cost, positioning them to achieve superior returns on investments. Interactive Brokers has consistently earned recognition as a top broker, garnering multiple awards and accolades from respected industry sources such as Barron's, Investopedia, Stockbrokers.com, and many others.
Follow Interactive Brokers on social media: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X (Twitter), TikTok, YouTube
When deciding whether to buy, sell, or hold a stock, investors often rely on analyst recommendations. Media reports about rating changes by these brokerage-firm-employed (or sell-side) analysts often influence a stock's price, but are they really important?
Let's take a look at what these Wall Street heavyweights have to say about Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) before we discuss the reliability of brokerage recommendations and how to use them to your advantage.
Interactive Brokers currently has an average brokerage recommendation (ABR) of 1.20, on a scale of 1 to 5 (Strong Buy to Strong Sell), calculated based on the actual recommendations (Buy, Hold, Sell, etc.) made by 10 brokerage firms. An ABR of 1.20 approximates between Strong Buy and Buy.
Of the 10 recommendations that derive the current ABR, nine are Strong Buy, representing 90% of all recommendations.
Brokerage Recommendation Trends for IBKR
Check price target & stock forecast for Interactive Brokers here>>>
The ABR suggests buying Interactive Brokers, but making an investment decision solely on the basis of this information might not be a good idea. According to several studies, brokerage recommendations have little to no success guiding investors to choose stocks with the most potential for price appreciation.
Do you wonder why? As a result of the vested interest of brokerage firms in a stock they cover, their analysts tend to rate it with a strong positive bias. According to our research, brokerage firms assign five "Strong Buy" recommendations for every "Strong Sell" recommendation.
This means that the interests of these institutions are not always aligned with those of retail investors, giving little insight into the direction of a stock's future price movement. It would therefore be best to use this information to validate your own analysis or a tool that has proven to be highly effective at predicting stock price movements.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool, the Zacks Rank, which classifies stocks into five groups, ranging from Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) to Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell), is a reliable indicator of a stock's near-term price performance. So, validating the Zacks Rank with ABR could go a long way in making a profitable investment decision.
Zacks Rank Should Not Be Confused With ABRAlthough both Zacks Rank and ABR are displayed in a range of 1--5, they are different measures altogether.
The ABR is calculated solely based on brokerage recommendations and is typically displayed with decimals (example: 1.28). In contrast, the Zacks Rank is a quantitative model allowing investors to harness the power of earnings estimate revisions. It is displayed in whole numbers -- 1 to 5.
It has been and continues to be the case that analysts employed by brokerage firms are overly optimistic with their recommendations. Because of their employers' vested interests, these analysts issue more favorable ratings than their research would support, misguiding investors far more often than helping them.
On the other hand, earnings estimate revisions are at the core of the Zacks Rank. And empirical research shows a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and near-term stock price movements.
Furthermore, the different grades of the Zacks Rank are applied proportionately across all stocks for which brokerage analysts provide earnings estimates for the current year. In other words, at all times, this tool maintains a balance among the five ranks it assigns.
There is also a key difference between the ABR and Zacks Rank when it comes to freshness. When you look at the ABR, it may not be up-to-date. Nonetheless, since brokerage analysts constantly revise their earnings estimates to reflect changing business trends, and their actions get reflected in the Zacks Rank quickly enough, it is always timely in predicting future stock prices.
Is IBKR a Good Investment?Looking at the earnings estimate revisions for Interactive Brokers, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year has increased 9.5% over the past month to $2.69.
Analysts' growing optimism over the company's earnings prospects, as indicated by strong agreement among them in revising EPS estimates higher, could be a legitimate reason for the stock to soar in the near term.
The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) for Interactive Brokers. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) stocks here >>>>
Therefore, the Buy-equivalent ABR for Interactive Brokers may serve as a useful guide for investors.
Key Takeaways IBKR's pullback reflects profit-taking, valuation, rate concerns and softer sequential trading activity.New products, AI tools and broader global access support client growth and revenue diversification.Revenues and earnings are projected to grow at double-digit rates through 2027 despite a premium valuation. Shares of Interactive Brokers Group (IBKR - Free Report) have lost 8.6% over the past month. It underperformed the S&P 500 Index and the industry. The pullback appears to reflect profit-taking, elevated valuation, interest-rate concerns and a sequential moderation in trading activity rather than any meaningful deterioration in the company’s long-term fundamentals.
Compared with two of its closest peers, Robinhood Markets (HOOD - Free Report) and Charles Schwab (SCHW - Free Report) , IBKR has outperformed Robinhood during the period but lagged Schwab.
One-Month Price Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
The key question now is whether the recent share-price weakness in Interactive Brokers presents a buying opportunity or warrants a wait-and-watch approach. Let’s find out.
IBKR’s Product Diversification EffortsInteractive Brokers continues to add features that widen its addressable client base and deepen wallet share. The company has added nine new tokens for trading through Zero Hash and three new tokens through Paxos, while introducing the ability to transfer funds to external wallets via stablecoin. It also launched a unified screen for trading prediction-market contracts across Kalshi, CME and ForecastEx, along with AI integrations with Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and xAI’s Grok for account navigation, research and trade preparation.
It also launched CBOE binary-options trading and received preliminary conditional approval for a U.S. national trust bank charter, which is expected to support direct custody services for mutual fund and ETF clients. Further, enhancements to its Hedge Fund Marketplace have simplified fund discovery and investment while improving engagement through portfolio-manager video presentations.
These launches build on additions such as stablecoin funding, Coinbase Derivatives access and the Connections discovery feature, and complement tools like Ask IBKR and AI News Summaries. Together, these initiatives support client retention, broaden fee-generating opportunities and reduce reliance on any single product line amid intense competition. Reflecting growing global platform usage, overnight trading volumes nearly tripled year over year to 10.9 million trades in the second quarter from 3.8 million.
nteractive Brokers’ Technological Excellence Drives GrowthInteractive Brokers’ technological superiority is one of its strongest aspects. The company processes trades in stocks, digital assets, futures, options and forex on more than 160 exchanges across several countries and currencies. Unlike many of its peers, IBKR has a very low level of compensation expenses relative to net revenues. This helps the company generate solid growth.
Since its inception, Interactive Brokers has focused on proprietary software that automates broker-dealer functions. This has supported a steady rise in revenues over time, with total net revenues witnessing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.8% over 2020-2025, driven by interest income, commissions and business expansion efforts. The momentum continued in the first half of 2026, and recent operating metrics show sustained engagement.
Net revenues are expected to keep improving, driven by the company's solid Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs) numbers and a robust trading backdrop. This anchors the forward view to sustained engagement on the platform. The company’s technological superiority, combined with easier regulations to improve product velocity, will likely support its net revenues through higher client acquisitions.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for IBKR’s 2026 and 2027 revenues is $7.26 billion and $8.23 billion, which indicates year-over-year growth of 18% and 13.3%, respectively.
Sales Estimates
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Interactive Brokers’ Global PresenceInteractive Brokers continues to scale its international platform to capture rising cross-border investing and wealth creation in emerging markets. During the second quarter, the company expanded its global and product reach by becoming the first electronic broker to offer access to both the Korea Stock Exchange and Nextrade, introducing cryptocurrency trading across Europe and providing eligible U.K. and European retail clients with access to the SpaceX IPO.
In 2025, IBKR expanded global market access by enabling eligible clients outside Brazil to trade Brazilian equities on B3 and by adding UAE equities through the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and Dubai Financial Market. It also broadened access to Bursa Malaysia and continues pursuing growth in Taiwan, Mexico and India. It is the first SFC-licensed securities broker approved to allow retail clients to trade cryptocurrencies in Hong Kong.
A wider geographic and product footprint supports sustained account growth and helps diversify client activity across regions.
IBKR’s Efficient Capital DistributionsInteractive Brokers has a long record of dividend payments and has increased its payout in recent years. In April 2026, it announced a 9.4% hike in the dividend, following a 28% rise in 2025 and a 150% jump in 2024. Over the past five years, the company has hiked its dividend three times, with an annualized growth rate of 39.6%. It has a dividend payout ratio of 14%.
The June 2025 four-for-one stock split improved accessibility without changing fundamentals.
The company uses insignificant debt to finance its operations and ended the second quarter with substantial liquidity levels. This supports ongoing platform investment and regulatory requirements while still returning cash to shareholders over time.
Analyzing IBKR’s Earnings Estimates & ValuationOver the past seven days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Interactive Brokers’ 2026 and 2027 earnings has been revised upward to $2.69 and $3.17, respectively. This indicates year-over-year growth rates of 22.8% for 2026 and 18% for 2027.
Earnings Estimates
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
In terms of valuation, the IBKR stock looks expensive compared with the industry. The stock is trading at a forward 12-month price/earnings (P/E) of 29.49X, which is above the industry’s 13.92X.
P/E F12M
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research
Looking at its peers, Robinhood has a forward 12-month P/E of 38.01X and Schwab is currently trading at a P/E of 14.57X. Thus, Interactive Brokers is trading at a premium compared with Schwab but it is relatively inexpensive compared with Robinhood.
Is Now the Right Time to Buy Interactive Brokers Stock?IBKR’s expanding product suite, AI-enabled tools, global market access and rising overnight trading activity support continued client growth and revenue diversification. Its technology-driven model, low compensation burden, strong balance sheet and upward earnings revisions further strengthen the investment case.
Although the stock trades at a premium and remains sensitive to rates and elevated expenses, its revenues and earnings are expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2027. Hence, investors may consider buying the dip before renewed momentum pushes the shares higher.
At present, IBKR sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)---- $IBKR #IBKR--Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: IBKR) an automated global electronic broker, today reported its Electronic Brokerage monthly performance metrics for July. Brokerage highlights for the month included: 4.426 million Daily Average Revenue Trades (DARTs)1, 27% higher than prior year and 16% lower than prior month. Ending client equity of $906.7 billion, 32% higher than prior year and 3% lower than prior month. Ending client margin loan balances of $100.7.
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) has recently been on Zacks.com's list of the most searched stocks. Therefore, you might want to consider some of the key factors that could influence the stock's performance in the near future.
Over the past month, shares of this company have returned -7.5%, compared to the Zacks S&P 500 composite's -1.5% change. During this period, the Zacks Financial - Investment Bank industry, which Interactive Brokers falls in, has gained 1.5%. The key question now is: What could be the stock's future direction?
While media releases or rumors about a substantial change in a company's business prospects usually make its stock 'trending' and lead to an immediate price change, there are always some fundamental facts that eventually dominate the buy-and-hold decision-making.
Revisions to Earnings EstimatesHere at Zacks, we prioritize appraising the change in the projection of a company's future earnings over anything else. That's because we believe the present value of its future stream of earnings is what determines the fair value for its stock.
Our analysis is essentially based on how sell-side analysts covering the stock are revising their earnings estimates to take the latest business trends into account. When earnings estimates for a company go up, the fair value for its stock goes up as well. And when a stock's fair value is higher than its current market price, investors tend to buy the stock, resulting in its price moving upward. Because of this, empirical studies indicate a strong correlation between trends in earnings estimate revisions and short-term stock price movements.
Interactive Brokers is expected to post earnings of $0.65 per share for the current quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +14%. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed +4.8%.
For the current fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $2.69 points to a change of +22.8% from the prior year. Over the last 30 days, this estimate has changed +9.5%.
For the next fiscal year, the consensus earnings estimate of $3.17 indicates a change of +18% from what Interactive Brokers is expected to report a year ago. Over the past month, the estimate has changed +12.4%.
With an impressive externally audited track record, our proprietary stock rating tool -- the Zacks Rank -- is a more conclusive indicator of a stock's near-term price performance, as it effectively harnesses the power of earnings estimate revisions. The size of the recent change in the consensus estimate, along with three other factors related to earnings estimates, has resulted in a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) for Interactive Brokers.
The chart below shows the evolution of the company's forward 12-month consensus EPS estimate:
12 Month EPS
Projected Revenue GrowthWhile earnings growth is arguably the most superior indicator of a company's financial health, nothing happens as such if a business isn't able to grow its revenues. After all, it's nearly impossible for a company to increase its earnings for an extended period without increasing its revenues. So, it's important to know a company's potential revenue growth.
In the case of Interactive Brokers, the consensus sales estimate of $1.81 billion for the current quarter points to a year-over-year change of +12.1%. The $7.26 billion and $8.23 billion estimates for the current and next fiscal years indicate changes of +18% and +13.3%, respectively.
Last Reported Results and Surprise HistoryInteractive Brokers reported revenues of $1.88 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +27.2%. EPS of $0.69 for the same period compares with $0.51 a year ago.
Compared to the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.79 billion, the reported revenues represent a surprise of +5.14%. The EPS surprise was +7.81%.
Over the last four quarters, Interactive Brokers surpassed consensus EPS estimates three times. The company topped consensus revenue estimates three times over this period.
ValuationWithout considering a stock's valuation, no investment decision can be efficient. In predicting a stock's future price performance, it's crucial to determine whether its current price correctly reflects the intrinsic value of the underlying business and the company's growth prospects.
While comparing the current values of a company's valuation multiples, such as price-to-earnings (P/E), price-to-sales (P/S), and price-to-cash flow (P/CF), with its own historical values helps determine whether its stock is fairly valued, overvalued, or undervalued, comparing the company relative to its peers on these parameters gives a good sense of the reasonability of the stock's price.
The Zacks Value Style Score (part of the Zacks Style Scores system), which pays close attention to both traditional and unconventional valuation metrics to grade stocks from A to F (an A is better than a B; a B is better than a C; and so on), is pretty helpful in identifying whether a stock is overvalued, rightly valued, or temporarily undervalued.
Interactive Brokers is graded C on this front, indicating that it is trading at par with its peers. Click here to see the values of some of the valuation metrics that have driven this grade.
ConclusionThe facts discussed here and much other information on Zacks.com might help determine whether or not it's worthwhile paying attention to the market buzz about Interactive Brokers. However, its Zacks Rank #1 does suggest that it may outperform the broader market in the near term.
GREENWICH, Conn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- #IBKR--Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR) today announced that clients can now connect their accounts to nearly any AI tool they already use.
Bank of Nova Scotia increased its stake in Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:IBKR – Free Report) by 89.5% in the first quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund owned 275,306 shares of the financial services provider’s stock after acquiring an additional 130,043 shares during the period. Bank of Nova Scotia’s holdings in Interactive Brokers Group were worth $18,465,000 as of its most recent SEC filing.
Several other institutional investors also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. Norges Bank purchased a new stake in shares of Interactive Brokers Group during the fourth quarter valued at approximately $453,146,000. Orbis Allan Gray Ltd increased its stake in shares of Interactive Brokers Group by 178.8% in the second quarter. Orbis Allan Gray Ltd now owns 9,740,072 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $539,697,000 after buying an additional 6,246,715 shares during the period. Bank of America Corp DE increased its stake in shares of Interactive Brokers Group by 225.4% in the second quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 7,594,906 shares of the financial services provider’s stock worth $420,834,000 after buying an additional 5,260,923 shares during the period. State Street Corp raised its holdings in Interactive Brokers Group by 23.2% during the 3rd quarter. State Street Corp now owns 18,648,758 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $1,283,221,000 after buying an additional 3,517,729 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Invesco Ltd. boosted its position in Interactive Brokers Group by 44.1% during the 4th quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 8,288,379 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $533,026,000 after buying an additional 2,534,772 shares during the period. 23.80% of the stock is currently owned by hedge funds and other institutional investors.
Insider Buying and Selling In other Interactive Brokers Group news, Director Lawrence E. Harris sold 26,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction on Tuesday, April 28th. The stock was sold at an average price of $76.93, for a total transaction of $2,000,180.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 173,482 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $13,345,970.26. This trade represents a 13.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link. Corporate insiders own 2.80% of the company’s stock.
Interactive Brokers Group Price Performance IBKR stock opened at $91.74 on Friday. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. has a 1 year low of $58.95 and a 1 year high of $97.84. The company has a market cap of $155.62 billion, a P/E ratio of 36.70, a PEG ratio of 2.02 and a beta of 1.33. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $90.09 and a 200 day moving average of $79.44.
Interactive Brokers Group (NASDAQ:IBKR – Get Free Report) last announced its earnings results on Tuesday, July 21st. The financial services provider reported $0.69 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.64 by $0.05. The firm had revenue of $1.88 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.80 billion. Interactive Brokers Group had a return on equity of 5.37% and a net margin of 9.94%.The business’s revenue was up 28.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company earned $0.51 EPS. On average, equities research analysts expect that Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. will post 2.64 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.
Interactive Brokers Group Announces Dividend The company also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Monday, September 14th. Shareholders of record on Tuesday, September 1st will be issued a $0.0875 dividend. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, September 1st. This represents a $0.35 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.4%. Interactive Brokers Group’s dividend payout ratio is 14.00%.
Wall Street Analyst Weigh In IBKR has been the topic of a number of analyst reports. Zacks Research upgraded shares of Interactive Brokers Group from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 15th. BMO Capital Markets reiterated an “outperform” rating and set a $110.00 target price (up from $105.00) on shares of Interactive Brokers Group in a report on Wednesday. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods began coverage on Interactive Brokers Group in a research note on Wednesday, April 8th. They issued a “market perform” rating and a $75.00 target price on the stock. The Goldman Sachs Group set a $98.00 price target on Interactive Brokers Group in a research report on Friday, May 1st. Finally, Bank of America increased their price objective on Interactive Brokers Group from $83.00 to $106.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 14th. Two analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, seven have given a Buy rating and three have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $96.89.
Check Out Our Latest Research Report on IBKR
About Interactive Brokers Group (Free Report)
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc (NASDAQ: IBKR) is a global electronic brokerage holding company that provides trading, clearing and custody services to retail traders, institutional investors, proprietary trading groups and financial advisors. The firm offers direct access to a wide range of asset classes, including equities, options, futures, foreign exchange, bonds and exchange-traded funds across many international markets. Interactive Brokers emphasizes electronic order execution, automated trading and low transaction costs as core differentiators for its clients.
Its product suite centers on advanced trading platforms and infrastructure.
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Interactive Brokers (IBKR -0.05%) keeps setting records in the financial asset trading space. The online brokerage catering to global traders posted a pre-tax profit margin of 77% in its latest quarterly earnings, marking seven straight quarters with a bottom-line margin above 70%.
This makes it one of the most profitable companies in the world in relation to profit margins, which is why it now has a market cap of $155 billion. Here's the magic behind these absurd margins, and whether it makes the stock a buy right now.
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Automated brokerage for global traders Stock trading is now almost entirely digital worldwide. For Interactive Brokers -- otherwise known as IBKR -- this has been a tailwind, as it is one of the best platforms for connecting global traders. Through decades of technology and regulatory investments, IBKR can connect investors who want to buy stocks, bonds, and foreign currencies in 170 markets worldwide.
When an individual or a hedge fund in the United States wants to buy stocks in Japan, the easiest way is to use IBKR. The same can be said for someone in Japan who wants to invest directly in the United States. This better customer value proposition has people switching over their trading to IBKR, with customer accounts up 34% to 5.19 million at the end of last quarter.
With only 3,000 employees globally, compared to sometimes 10 times that number at competing stock brokerages, IBKR has remained highly efficient in spending to scale profits quickly across its digital trading platform. This is why the business has enjoyed extreme operating leverage in recent years, hitting 77% last quarter. A ceiling of 100% limits how much more leverage IBKR can achieve in its operations, but its discipline on employee count should lead to even greater margin expansion in the years ahead if it can keep growing total customer accounts.
Image source: Getty Images.
The rub on IBKR's margin, and whether it is a buy today One area where IBKR has seen a boost to its business in the last few years is net interest income. With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, the company was able to charge customers more on margin loans and credit balances, as well as with idle cash on its balance sheet. Net interest income grew 23% to $1 billion last quarter, and is actually the largest revenue segment for the business.
This may reverse in a falling interest rate environment, which will affect IBKR's growth and pre-tax profit margin. However, it doesn't change the fact that IBKR is one of the most efficiently run growth businesses in the world.
But is the stock cheap? Today, IBKR trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 36, one of its highest levels in years, driven by a recent acceleration in customer account growth. I think the stock will likely do well over the long term. It is just hard to argue that IBKR is a screaming buy right now, due to this high P/E ratio.
Brett Schafer has positions in Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $43.75 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $46.25 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Interactive Brokers (IBKR) experienced a slight decline in stock price following a robust Q2 earnings report. The company posted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.
Key Takeaways IBKR beat Q2 earnings estimates as revenues, customer accounts and DARTs increased y/y.IBKR reported adjusted net revenues of $1.88 billion, while the pre-tax profit margin rose to 77%.Interactive Brokers strengthened its capital position with higher cash, total assets and equity balances. Interactive Brokers Group’s (IBKR - Free Report) second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings per share of 69 cents surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 64 cents. The bottom line reflected a rise of 35.3% from the prior-year quarter.
Results were primarily aided by an increase in revenues, growth in customer accounts and a rise in daily average revenue trades (DARTs). However, higher expenses were the undermining factor.
After considering non-recurring items, net income available to common shareholders (GAAP basis) was $312 million, up from $224 million in the prior-year quarter.
Interactive Brokers reported comprehensive income available to common shareholders of $297 million, or 66 cents per share, compared with $303 million, or 69 cents per share, in the prior-year quarter.
IBKR’s Revenues Improve, Expenses RiseAdjusted net revenues were $1.88 billion, up 27.2% year over year. Total GAAP net revenues were $1.90 billion, up 28.1% year over year. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the top line was $1.79 billion.
Total non-interest expenses increased 17% year over year to $440 million. The rise was due to an increase in almost all cost components, except for communications costs.
Income before income taxes was $1.46 billion, up 31.9% year over year.
The adjusted pre-tax profit margin was 77%, up from 75% a year ago.
In the reported quarter, total customer DARTs jumped 36% year over year to 4.82 million.
Customer accounts grew 34% from the year-ago quarter to 5,185,000.
Interactive Brokers’ Capital Position StrongAs of June 30, 2026, cash and cash equivalents (including cash and securities set aside for regulatory purposes) totaled $103.9 billion compared with $81.8 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025.
As of June 30, 2026, total assets were $247.3 billion compared with $203.2 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025. Total equity was $22.3 billion, up from $20.5 billion as of Dec. 31, 2025.
Our View on IBKRInteractive Brokers' efforts to develop proprietary software and enhance its emerging market customers and global footprint, along with its product suite expansion, are expected to continue aiding revenues. However, elevated expenses and high exposure to overseas geopolitical risks are headwinds.
Currently, Interactive Brokers carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Earnings Release Dates of IBKR’s PeersHere are some of IBKR’s peers that are yet to come out with quarterly numbers.
Robinhood Markets (HOOD - Free Report) is slated to announce quarterly numbers on July 29.
In the past week, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for Robinhood’s quarterly earnings has moved lower to 39 cents. The figure suggests a 7.1% decline from the prior-year quarter reported number.
Tradeweb Markets (TW - Free Report) is slated to announce second-quarter 2026 results on July 30.
In the past week, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for TW’s quarterly earnings has been revised lower to 95 cents. The figure indicates a 9.2% rise from the prior-year reported number.
Key Takeaways Interactive Brokers posted record revenues and pretax income while holding pretax margin at 77%.Accounts rose 34% to 5.19 million, while client equity climbed 40% to $930.3 billion.New offerings in Korea, European crypto and AI account connectivity broadened the platform. Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR - Free Report) used its second-quarter 2026 call to press a familiar point with more force: the company is scaling fast without giving up profitability. Management highlighted record revenues, pretax income, accounts, client equity and DARTs, while keeping pretax margin at 77%.
That combination mattered more than the earnings beat alone. The call centered on how account growth, product expansion and rising client engagement are widening the firm’s reach across retail, institutional and global markets.
IBKR Keeps Pairing Scale With MarginIBKR reported adjusted earnings of $0.69 per share on net revenues of $1.88 billion, ahead of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.64 and $1.79 billion, respectively. That translated to surprise rates of 7.81% on earnings and 5.14% on revenues.
Chief financial officer Paul Brody said the quarter produced another set of revenue and pretax income records, with commissions up 30% and net interest income up 23% from a year earlier. He tied that performance to stronger trading activity, higher customer balances and continued growth in margin borrowing.
The profitability message was just as important. Pretax margin held at 77%, extending a multiquarter stretch above 70%, a sign that Interactive Brokers is still converting volume and account growth into earnings efficiently.
Interactive Brokers Pushes New Products AbroadDirector of Investor Relations Nancy Stuebe, delivering chief executive officer Milan Galik’s prepared remarks, emphasized that the company used the quarter to widen product access and deepen international reach. New offerings included trading in Korea, broader crypto availability in Europe and a unified prediction markets destination.
Management also spotlighted IBKR Connector, launched with Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI, which lets clients connect AI chatbots directly to their brokerage accounts for research, portfolio review and trade preparation. That product stood out as one of the clearest strategic priorities on the call.
The company added that it received preliminary conditional approval from the OCC for a national trust bank charter, which would support direct custody for mutual fund and ETF customers. That points to a broader effort to expand the platform beyond core brokerage execution.
IBKR Sees Broad-Based Client MomentumManagement made clear that this quarter’s growth was not coming from a single pocket. Customer accounts rose 34% to 5.19 million, customer equity climbed 40% to $930.3 billion and total customer DARTs increased 36% to 4.82 million.
Brody said investors were taking on more risk through margin loans and derivatives, while uninvested cash balances still reached a record $182.4 billion. That balance between active trading and rising idle cash gave the company support across both commission and interest-related revenue streams.
The quarter also showed strength in overnight trading and introducing broker activity. Galik said growth is coming across regions and client types, while the introducing broker pipeline remained healthy with another double-digit number of integrations going live.
Interactive Brokers Frames Rate Risk CarefullyNet interest remained a major driver, but management spent time explaining the moving pieces. Brody said higher balances in margin loans and segregated cash more than offset pressure from higher interest paid on customer cash and a lower average Fed funds rate.
The release showed customer margin loans up 67% to $108.5 billion and customer credits up 27% to $182.4 billion, helping net interest income reach $1.06 billion in the quarter. At the same time, reported net interest margin slipped to 1.93% from 2.07% a year earlier.
Brody also offered a clear sensitivity framework: a 25-basis-point move in Fed funds would change annual net interest income by about $81 million, while a similar move across relevant non-U.S. benchmark rates would shift annual net interest income by about $38 million.
IBKR Q&A Highlights Confidence and RestraintThe analyst Q&A added useful texture around growth durability. Asked by Wolfe Research about heavier marketing spend and whether that supports sustainably faster account growth, Founder and Chairman Thomas Peterffy said returns on marketing are roughly proportional to the added expense, though he was careful not to promise a higher long-term growth target.
On capital, a Goldman Sachs analyst asked about excess capital and acquisitions. Galik said excess capital was about $10.3 billion, up roughly $1.1 billion from the prior quarter, but added that none of the acquisition ideas being pitched had stood out enough to pursue.
The Q&A also showed management leaning into newer businesses without overreaching. Executives described strong early traction in Korea, growing use of AI account connectivity and continued focus in prediction markets on economic, political and climate contracts rather than sports or entertainment.
Interactive Brokers Leaves a Clear MessageComing out of the call, management’s posture was straightforward. The company is still centered on automation, low costs and global product breadth, but it is increasingly pairing that model with faster rollout of new tools and market access.
Just as important, executives sounded comfortable with current risk levels. Peterffy said the firm is closely monitoring client leverage and remains comfortable with margin exposure, while Galik described account and asset growth as broad and healthy across the platform.
Zacks Signals Point to Solid Near-Term SetupIBKR currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), along with a Value Score of C, Growth Score of B, Momentum Score of A and a VGM Score of B. Under the Zacks framework, Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and 2 stocks paired with a Style Score of A or B offer the strongest potential for outperformance over the next one to three months, and IBKR’s Momentum and VGM readings are favorable on that measure. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
The mixed Value Score suggests the stock does not screen as strongly on valuation as it does on growth and momentum characteristics. Even so, Zacks signals are not static, and the current rank can change as earnings estimate revisions adjust in the wake of the quarter’s results.
Net Revenue: Record net revenues achieved.Pretax Profit Margin: 77%, marking the seventh consecutive quarter above 70%.Commissions: Increased by 30% year-over-
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc. (IBKR) Q2 2026 Earnings Call July 21, 2026 4:30 PM EDT
Company Participants
Nancy Stuebe - Director of Investor Relations
Paul Brody - CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Thomas Peterffy - Founder & Chairman
Milan Galik - President, CEO & Director
Conference Call Participants
Steven Chubak - Wolfe Research, LLC
James Yaro - Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., Research Division
Patrick Moley - Piper Sandler & Co., Research Division
Benjamin Budish - Barclays Bank PLC, Research Division
Daniel Fannon - Jefferies LLC, Research Division
Brennan Hawken - BMO Capital Markets Equity Research
Christopher Allen - Keefe, Bruyette, & Woods, Inc., Research Division
Presentation
Operator
Good day, everyone, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Interactive Brokers Group Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Now it's my pleasure to turn the call to Nancy Stuebe, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.
Nancy Stuebe
Director of Investor Relations
Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining us today are Thomas Peterffy, our Founder and Chairman; Milan Galik, our President and CEO; and Paul Brody, our CFO. I will be presenting Milan's comments on the business, and all 3 will be available at our Q&A. As a reminder, today's call may include forward-looking statements, which represent the company's belief regarding future events, which, by their nature, are not certain and are outside of the company's control. Our actual results and financial condition may differ, possibly materially, from what is indicated in these forward-looking statements.
We ask that you refer to the disclaimers in our press release. You should also review a description of risk factors contained in our financial reports filed with the SEC. The S&P 500 was up nearly 15% in the second quarter as markets rose strongly in April and May on the back of strong
On July 21, 2026, Interactive Brokers Group Inc (IBKR) released its 8-K filing, revealing impressive financial results for the second quarter of 2026. The compa
