Charles Schwab

Charles Schwab was born July 29, 1937, in Sacramento, California, to Lloyd Schwab, a lawyer who served as Yolo County's district attorney, and Terrie Schwab. He struggled through school without knowing why, failing English twice and leaning on classmates' notes to get through lectures; nobody diagnosed the dyslexia behind it until well into his adult life, after his own son was found to have the same condition. He captained the golf team at Santa Barbara High School, then studied economics at Stanford, earning a bachelor's degree in 1959 and an MBA in 1961. In 1963 he launched an investment newsletter, and by 1971 he had incorporated his own small brokerage, though nothing about it yet looked like what it would become.

Schwab renamed the firm Charles Schwab & Co. in 1973 and was waiting when the Securities and Exchange Commission ended fixed brokerage commissions on May 1, 1975, a deregulation the industry called May Day. He cut prices roughly in half, paid his brokers salaries instead of commissions, and opened his first branch in Sacramento that September, betting that ordinary investors would trade for themselves once the cost came down and the salesman's incentive to churn their accounts went away. Bank of America bought the company in 1983, and Schwab bought it back through a 280 million dollar management buyout in 1987, taking it public that September, weeks before the stock market crash. By the mid-1990s Schwab was the largest discount broker in the country, with more than a billion dollars in annual revenue.

The man who built his name on cutting fees to protect small investors also sold them a fund that hurt many of the same people. Schwab YieldPlus, marketed through the 2000s as a cash-like, low-risk alternative for conservative savers, was in fact loaded with mortgage-backed securities; when the 2008 credit crisis hit, the fund lost roughly a third of its value in months, damaging retirement savings for thousands of the ordinary customers the Schwab brand had spent thirty years courting. A class-action suit followed, and the company settled it in 2010 for 235 million dollars, without admitting wrongdoing. It landed on the one claim Schwab had built the whole company around, that his firm worked for the investor rather than against them.

Schwab stepped back from day-to-day management in 2008, handing the chief executive job to Walt Bettinger, but stayed chairman of the company that carries his name and, as of 2025, a fortune Forbes put above 11 billion dollars. The firm he built absorbed TD Ameritrade in 2020 and now holds trillions in client assets, the scale discount brokerage was always aimed at. Whether his legacy nets out as the man who opened investing to millions of ordinary Americans, or as the figure whose own flagship fund burned some of those same customers in 2008, is not a question the record has settled, and Schwab, active in his late eighties, has not settled it either.

Charles Schwab's life against the full span of the corpus — the fading end marks a life still in progress.

• Charles Schwab & Co. company
  Renamed from First Commander Corporation; became the first major discount broker 1973
• Mutual Fund OneSource other
  No-transaction-fee mutual fund marketplace, changed how retail investors bought funds 1992
• Web-based online trading invention
  Launched at 39 dollars a trade 1996
• Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation company
  Funds dyslexia research and family support programs 1987
• Elimination of online trading commissions other
  Ended the fee model he had spent 44 years cutting toward zero 2019

• July 29, 1937 aged 0 Born in Sacramento, California
• 1959 aged ~22 Graduates Stanford with a degree in economics
• 1973 aged ~36 Renames the firm Charles Schwab & Co.
• May 1, 1975 aged 37 SEC deregulation ends fixed commissions; opens first branch that September
• 1987 aged ~50 Buys the company back from Bank of America and takes it public
• 1996 aged ~59 Launches web-based trading at 39 dollars a trade
• 2008 aged ~71 Steps back from day-to-day management, remains chairman
• April 19, 2011 aged 73 Settles the YieldPlus class action for 235 million dollars
• 2020 aged ~83 Schwab acquires TD Ameritrade

• John C. Bogle 1929–2019
  Founded Vanguard and launched the first index mutual fund for retail investors. rival democratizer of investing to
• Ken Griffin b. 1968
  Hedge fund manager who founded Citadel and became one of the most successful investors in history. traded against by
• Warren Buffett b. 1930
  Value investor whose disciplined approach built one of the largest personal fortunes in American history. contrasted with