Company profile
- Industry
- Financial services
- Founded
- 1971
- Headquarters
- Westlake, United States
- Ownership
- Publicly traded
Profiles are auto-generated and infrequently updated.
Decisions on record
3 verified Decision Records on Charles Schwab, and the casebook each one belongs to.
| Fork date | Decision type | What Charles Schwab chose | Where it stood | The story | Casebook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | The Money Machine | Cut commissions to zero | held a record $10.10 trillion across 36.5 million active brokerage accounts (2024) | Read the story → | The Money Machine Casebook → |
| 2019 | The Loss Leader | Cut commissions to zero | Schwab signed an agreement to acquire TD Ameritrade for roughly $26 billion in stock (2019-11) | Read the story → | The Loss Leader Casebook → |
| 2023 | Crisis Response | Bridge with borrowing | Unrealized loss on the held-to-maturity book widened to roughly $19.4 billion by Q3 2023 (2023) | Read the story → | Crisis Response Casebook → |
Videos on Charles Schwab
Run one of these yourself
The decisions Charles Schwab faced, as kits you can run.
Each pack takes one of these decisions and gives you the framework, a deck for the room, a model that resolves to one number, and the sourced cases behind it. $499, one-time.
Business ModelThe Money MachineWhere does the money actually come from, and who sets the rate it comes in at?See the pack →Crisis & ReinventionThe Crisis ResponseWhat is one more quarter of not acting worth?See the pack →Business ModelThe Loss LeaderWhat share of the units you sell cheap has to come back for the subsidy to be repaid?See the pack →
The analyses
The Money Machine · Business Model
Charles Schwab Gives Away Trading Because the Real Money Is in Your Idle Cash
Everyone thinks Schwab is a brokerage. It's a bank-scale interest-rate machine — net interest revenue hit $10.7 billion in 2022, while the commissions it scrapped were only ~4% of revenue. Free trading is the funnel. The cash you forgot about is the product.
8 min
The Crisis Response · Crisis & Reinvention
Schwab Looked Like the Next SVB. The Numbers Were Telling a Completely Different Story.
In March 2023 Schwab's stock fell 33% — its worst month since 1987 — and $47 billion in market value vanished as investors braced for a bank run. The deposit drain was real. But it wasn't a panic. It was math the company had already modeled.
8 min
The Loss Leader · Business Model
Schwab Made Trades Free, Then Bought Its Wounded Rival 54 Days Later for $26 Billion
On October 7, 2019, Schwab made stock trades free. The story is democratization. The reality: commissions were 3-4% of Schwab's revenue but 15-16% of TD Ameritrade's, and 54 days later Schwab bought its crippled rival for $26 billion.
7 min