Schwab Up Despite Service Outage (SCHW, AMTD, ETFC, BAC, JPM)

If someone told you that Charles Schwab Corp. (NASDAQ:SCHW) was back in positive territory on the day the market fell 300 points in the DJIA AND on a day that many of its customers could not even access their trading accounts, would you believe it?  Guess what.  That is what happened.

Look at E*Trade (NASDAQ:ETFC).  It fell well over 20% on fears and rumors of all those mortgages they had leading to major charges in the company with the sums being tossed around too large fit to print.  We noted yesterday how its trading numbers rose but its customer internals were weakening on the strength of each account.  TD AMERITRADE (NASDAQ:AMTD) is still down 4% on the day.  Both of these stocks hit new 52-week lows today.

The money center banks are viewed as at least some form of insulation today.  Maybe it is massive short covering.  Maybe it is massive buying with the prevailing thought that they will not die in a severe slowing with a huge credit crunch.  JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) is now up 5% and Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) is up 3.5%.

Jon C. Ogg
August 16, 2007

Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.