Retirement plan participant account balances in self-directed brokerage accounts averaged $341,068 in the third quarter, a 12.8% increase year over year and a 2% decrease from the second quarter, Charles Schwab reported Monday.
SDBA account holders can use their brokerage accounts to invest retirement savings in individual stocks and bonds, ETFs, mutual funds and other securities that are not part of their retirement plan's core investment offerings.
The report said third-quarter trading volumes were similar to trades from one year ago and slightly lower than last quarter: an average of 13.1 trades per account, compared with 13.8 trades in the April-to-June period.
Participant holdings also remained similar to last quarter's, with a slight increase in cash holdings. Thirty-six percent of participant assets were held in equities, 30% in mutual funds, 20% in ETFs, 13% in cash and 1% in fixed income.
Allocation Trends
Schwab's third-quarter data showed that large-cap funds accounted for about 34% of mutual fund allocations, followed by 19% to taxable bond funds and 15% to international funds.
Information technology was again the largest equity sector holding at 29.8%, up slightly from 29.3% last quarter. The top five equity holdings remained the same as last quarter:
- Apple: 10.6%.
- Tesla: 6.9%.
- Amazon: 4.9%.
- Microsoft: 2.9%.
- NVIDIA: 2%.
Among ETFs, investors allocated 50% to U.S. equity in the third quarter, 14% to sector ETFs, 14% to U.S. fixed income and 13% to international equity.
