“I expect us to make steady progress in both client flows and financial performance throughout this upcoming year, and then I fully expect us to deliver outstanding results over the following years.”

In context

“ach been through as I listen to their feedback. But I fundamentally did not believe that the firm's best days were in the past. There were far too many strengths for me to believe that. And over a few years, with a lot of hard work by many people, I believe it's pretty clear that we proved them wrong. As our stock price grew over ten-fold and assets, the clients entrusted us with grew similarly. I understand that today there are some who might be asking similar questions, but I am confident that our Best Days are ahead of us. In my opinion, after four decades in this business, there is no firm better positioned for the future. No firm has our breadth of client solutions, investing, trading, custody, advisory workplace. And all delivered with an incredible value for investors and advisors. I expect us to make steady progress in both client flows and financial performance throughout this upcoming year, and then I fully expect us to deliver outstanding results over the following years. So let's go ahead and dig in to 2023. It was a year of many twists and turns for our investor clients as well as for our stockholders. And all the while we made substantial progress on the largest acquisition related conversion in the history of our industry. Coming on off a difficult 2022 for investors, the first quarter of 2023 began with turmoil in the regional banking world. Investor sentiment bounced between negative and positive throughout the year before eventually ending quite positive. Equity returns were strong in 2023, although largely concentrated in a modest number of stocks. For Schwab stockholders, it was a difficult year. Our stock lost about 17% of its value. The core reasoning behind most of this decline is our commitment to proactively following our through-client size”