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Saturday, May 4, 2019

Idle Ramblings -- My Favorite Companies -- May The Fourth Be With You -- 2019

Oprah has her "favorite things" (which includes a lot of Apple products). I have my "favorite companies."

Favorite companies: "emotional" favorites. It does not mean I invest in any of these companies. In fact, I have never invested in Schwab, the first company I mention. My "favorite companies" are simply companies that attract my attention, that I like to watch, sort of like my favorite movies.

Re-posting:  
My favorite company: how Schwab ate Wall Street. The firm was a discount broker for amateurs. Then its CEO turned it into a personal-finance supermarket that's dragging rivals in its wake. I've talked about Schwab and Merrill Lynch in the past few weeks.
When Walt Bettinger’s 3 a.m. alarm sounds, among the first things the Charles Schwab Corp. chief executive does is check how much net new money his company has pulled in over the past 24 hours. Last year, that was an average of $624 million a day—more than its three biggest Wall Street rivals combined.

Schwab was known mostly as a discount broker for amateurs when he took the helm in 2008 from founder Charles R. “Chuck” Schwab. Now it resembles something more like a personal-finance supermarket, offering services for the wealthy and budget-minded alike, at rock-bottom prices, spanning trading, banking and advice, both human and robotic.

Once barely noticed by the denizens of Wall Street, Schwab has amassed a stockpile of client assets that dwarfs those at Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley ’s brokerage arm and UBS Group AG’s Americas unit. Its stock is up 76% since the end of 2007, versus 26% for the Dow Jones U.S. Select Investment Services Index.
I'm re-posting that: I find it incredible -- this --
 Schwab has amassed a stockpile of client assets that dwarfs those at Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley ’s brokerage arm and UBS Group AG’s Americas unit.
Did anyone see that coming twenty years ago? No wonder Merrill Lynch had to merge with / or get bought by Bank of America.

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