Chuck, do you want to be the biggest? The most profitable? What do you want to be?
When I started, we would be doing 50 trades a day. Five Oh. All by hand with a pen and a pad.
I knew instinctively that individual investor needed a better deal, that they were getting a raw deal from Wall Street. I certainly knew in my mind that we had a great business opportunity ahead of us. And I'm sure Joe Ricketts felt the same way.
You know, we would study our competitors very, very carefully. Kept us fresh. Kept us ambitious.
"Best service. Big discounts. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I'm Charles Schwab. And that's the way I see it. From the investor's point of view."
There are many times Ameritrade would come up with some interesting idea. I mean, my goodness! Thinkorswim.. I wish we had done that. It was always sort of that kind of "Can we leapfrog them? And they would I'm sure say the same thing: "Can we leapfrog Schwab?"
One of the earliest online capabilities.
Buy, sell, do your research. I'll just call up a portfolio. And the order has been placed in our host computer system.
It was all about trying to help individual investors, better service, lower prices, faster transactions.
Both companies had our freedom to take care of individual investors.
In the early days, Merrill Lynch, might've been $110 for a trade and we brought it down all the way down. Finally, about a year ago, we were down to $5 and finally I decided let's go to zero. That's where it should be. Let's go to zero.
It would not have happened except for firms like Ameritrade and ourselves, who pushed that envelope.
I guess the beauty of being somewhat mature…is to see that most successful people I know, or people who are doing something for somebody else.
"Owning your tomorrow" is the way we express it. "Transforming lives." It's the same subject matter. It's really about helping people.
And that has not changed. You're helping somebody. Those are the most fulfilling of all jobs, for my money.
This combination, it’s historic. There’ll be no other company like the combination of the two companies coming together.
Individual investors and their independent advisors. Total focus.
There are other companies that might say we're like that also, but they're not.
It's the people at Ameritrade and the people at Schwab. We’ll be independent. We won't be part of another company that has a different mission in life.
Chuck, do you want to be the biggest? The most profitable? What do you want to be?
The merger today is not about being the biggest. To me, it's about being the strongest. An unbelievable fortress of a company with the highest level of integrity. That's what you want to deal with. And that's what we want to offer.
And that’s what we are.
