Charles Schwab today announced a series of enhancements and additional capabilities available to retail clients across its trading platforms, including Schwab.com, Schwab Mobile, and the thinkorswim platform suite.

Building on recent momentum, Schwab continues to roll out new Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered capabilities, including:

Schwab MCP Server: Schwab is introducing its own Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, offering clients using their LLM a secure connection to access their Schwab account data. Once authorized, clients can access market data and research, analyze their position performance and summarize their portfolio, create alerts and organize investment information and—provided their account is thinkorswim-enabled—prepare, place, and manage trades, all with the client in-the-loop, through their own AI platform. The Schwab MCP Server is currently available in pilot to a select group of clients using Anthropic’s Claude, and Schwab will be expanding client access and rolling out additional choices of supported AI platforms over the coming months.

thinkorswim Assistant: Expected to roll out soon, thinkorswim Assistant is a generative AI-powered search experience built into the thinkorswim Learning Center that will allow clients to more easily learn and customize the platform, with the ability to ask natural-language questions and receive concise, educational platform guidance. Instead of relying on exact keywords or searching through multiple articles and videos, with thinkorswim Assistant, clients will be able to describe what they want to do in plain English and receive a focused response.

AI-powered Portfolio Insights Enhancements: Launched to clients this spring, portfolio insights now includes a broader range of stocks and ETFs and incorporates additional sector news, clients will soon also have access to more time-frame options, expanded market news and Schwab Center for Financial Research (SCFR) content.

Schwab also recently announced the planned launch of Charley, the firm’s new generative AI-powered assistant designed to give clients a simpler, more conversational way to engage on Schwab.com and Schwab Mobile. Charley is rolling out in phases to eligible U.S. retail clients bringing Schwab information, tools, and resources together in one conversation. Through voice or text, clients can ask questions in their own words, receive information and suggested next steps, complete select tasks, and connect with a Schwab representative when additional support is needed.

“There’s no question that AI is going to make our clients’ investing and trading experience easier, and we have great momentum delivering a range of AI-powered capabilities for clients,” said James Kostulias, Managing Director and Head of Trading Services, Charles Schwab. “Our focus is to continue rolling out meaningful AI tools and features for clients that give them more choice in how they engage with our holistic offer of award-winning trading platforms, comprehensive education and insights, research, and investing and trading tools – combined with thousands of seasoned service professionals and specialized trading support. This combination of technology, platforms, and client support could be difficult for other brokerage firms to replicate.”

Schwab clients are now able to trade options on approximately 30 popular stocks, ETFs, and indexes traded on Cboe Options Exchange, including all of the Magnificent Seven, as well as five index options including the S&P 500 Index (SPX), Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) and the Russell 2000 Index (RUT), in extended hours sessions. These new sessions, available Monday – Friday, include a pre-market session from 7:30 – 9:25am ET and a post-market session from 4:00 – 4:15pm ET.

Extended hours open up new opportunities for clients who trade options. Single-stock option trades during the post-market session align with the current trading day rather than the next day, so clients closing a position during this time can help avoid exercise and assignment, while opening a position during this session makes it eligible for auto-exercise and expiration processing. During the A.M. session, clients can now trade on developments occurring overnight and company news.

“The addition of extended hours option trading is an important development for options traders, and making this capability available for clients is a continuation of Schwab’s longstanding commitment to give traders greater access and flexibility in how they trade and manage positions and risk,” said Kostulias.

Schwab has also introduced the following enhancements and features on its trading platforms.

• Now available on thinkorswim:

Order Gadget: The Order Gadget, similar to the All-in-One trade ticket, gives clients trade insight before reaching the order confirmation dialogue box. It allows clients to view individual pricing for each options leg, see maximum profit, maximum loss, breakeven, and estimated cost of the trade prior to confirmation, see the option chain below the pricing information for the options, and place trades directly from the Order Gadget. Clients can have multiple Order Gadgets open at once.

• Now available on Schwab.com:

New Bonds Landing Page: A new, modernized Fixed Income Bonds landing page makes it easier to find bonds using clearer navigation and enhanced search, provides more consistent and transparent rate presentation, and improves usability across devices while meeting accessibility standards.

Positions Page Full Screen Width Toggle: A new full-screen width toggle on the Schwab.com Positions page lets clients with screen widths of 1920px or greater switch between the fixed 1440px layout and a full-width view.

Extended Hours in Watchlist: Watchlists now reflect extended hours pricing.

• Now available on Schwab Mobile:

Expanded Trade Settings: Trade settings (custom defaults) on the Trade Ticket now extend beyond stocks and ETFs to include Option Settings and Crypto settings, allowing clients to tailor their experience to their trading style.

Updated Bubble Chart: The Bubble Chart experience, which allows clients to visualize gain/loss changes by the weight of individual stock or ETF positions, now reflects a more modernized design.

View thinkorswim Orders: Select thinkorswim-only order types will now be visible on the Schwab Mobile app, including Limit on Close, EXTO, specified routing, and dollar/percentage-based orders.