Fidelity adds 4.1 million new clients in the first quarter of 2021

Retail investors flocked to Fidelity during the first three months of the year, as the brokerage giant added millions of new clients.

Fidelity Investments added 4.1 million new accounts in the first quarter of 2021, up nearly 160% from the first quarter of 2020.

The firm is also raking in members of the new generation of retail investors. Of the new clients, 1.6 million were opened by retail investors 35 years old and younger, an increase of more than 222% from a year prior.

Daily average trades came in at 3.5 million, up nearly 60% from a year prior.

“Strong markets mixed with high levels of customer engagement resulted in record account growth, trade, and call volume across all of our major businesses,” Fidelity said in a statement.

In January, the major brokers were embroiled in an epic short squeeze in GameStop, which was partially fueled by Reddit-driven retail investors. The trading mania drove millions of new retail investors into the market on platforms like Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood and Interactive Brokers. 

Fidelity now has 83.4 million total accounts and $10.4 trillion assets under administration.

Online broker Charles Schwab added a record 3.2 million new clients in the first quarter of 2021. That compares with about 2.4 million new accounts added in all of 2020. 

Robinhood is a private company and therefore does not publicly release data on new clients. However, JMP Securities estimates Robinhood added nearly 6 million clients in the first 2 months of 2021.

Robinhood is expected to go public in the first half of this year.