We are a leading provider of securities brokerage services and technology-based financial services to retail investors and business partners. We provide our services predominantly through the Internet, a national branch network and relationships with independent registered investment advisors (“RIAs”). We believe that our services appeal to a broad market of independent, value-conscious retail investors, traders, financial planners and institutions. We use our efficient platform to offer brokerage services to retail investors and institutions under a simple, low-cost commission structure.

We have been an innovator in electronic brokerage services since entering the retail securities brokerage business in 1975. We believe that we were the first brokerage firm to offer the following products and services to retail clients: touch-tone trading; trading over the Internet; unlimited, streaming, free real-time quotes; extended trading hours; direct access to market destinations; and commitment on the speed of order execution. Since initiating online trading, we have substantially increased our number of brokerage accounts, average daily trading volume and total assets in client accounts. We have also built, and continue to invest in, a proprietary trade processing platform that is both cost-efficient and highly scalable, significantly lowering our operating costs per trade. In addition, we have made significant and effective investments in building the TD AMERITRADE brand.

Strategy

We intend to capitalize on the growth and consolidation of the retail brokerage industry in the United States and leverage our low-cost infrastructure to grow our market share and profitability. Our long-term growth strategy is to increase our market share of total assets in client accounts by providing superior offerings to long-term investors, RIAs and active traders. We strive to enhance the client experience by providing sophisticated asset management products and services, enhanced technological capabilities that enable self-directed investors to trade and invest in new asset classes and a superior, proprietary, single-platform system to support RIAs. The key elements of our strategy are as follows:


•Focus on retail brokerage services. We continue to focus on attracting active traders, long-term investors and RIAs to our retail brokerage services. This focused strategy is designed to enable us to maintain our low operating cost structure while offering our clients outstanding products and services.

•Provide a comprehensive long-term investor solution. We continue to expand our suite of diversified investment products and services to best serve investors’ needs. We help clients make investment decisions by providing simple-to-use investment tools, guidance, education and objective third-party research.

•Maintain industry leadership and market share with active traders. We help active traders make better-informed investment decisions by offering fast access to markets, insight into market trends and innovative tools such as strategy back-testing and comprehensive options research and trading capabilities.

•Continue to be a leader in the RIA industry. We provide RIAs with comprehensive brokerage and custody services supported by our robust integrated technology platform, customized personal service and practice management solutions.

•Leverage our infrastructure to add incremental revenue. Through our proprietary technology, we are able to provide a very robust online experience for long-term investors and active traders. Our low-cost, scalable platform provides speed, reliability and quality trade execution services for clients. The scalable capacity of our trading system allows us to add a significant number of transactions while incurring minimal additional fixed costs.

•Continue to be a low-cost provider of quality services. We intend to continue to lower our operating costs per trade by creating economies of scale, utilizing our single-platform proprietary system, continuing to automate processes and locating much of our operations in low-cost geographical areas. This low fixed-cost infrastructure provides us with significant financial flexibility.

•Continue to differentiate our offerings through innovative technologies and service enhancements. We have been an innovator in our industry over our 30-year history. We continually strive to provide our clients with the ability to customize their trading experience. We provide our clients greater choice by tailoring our features and functionality to meet their specific needs.

•Leverage the TD AMERITRADE brand. We believe that we have a superior brand identity and that our advertising has established TD AMERITRADE as a leading brand in the retail brokerage market.

•Continue to aggressively pursue growth through acquisitions. When evaluating potential acquisitions, we look for transactions that will give us operational leverage, technological leverage, increased market share or other strategic opportunities.

On June 11, 2009, we acquired thinkorswim Group Inc. (“thinkorswim”). The acquisition enhanced our industry leadership position in client trades per day and will provide our clients with access to thinkorswim’s advanced trading technology, tools and services, as well as a leading investor education program. This acquisition is discussed in further detail in Item 8, Financial Statements and Supplementary Data — Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements: Note 2 — Business Combinations.

On February 4, 2008, we purchased a portion of Fiserv, Inc.’s (“Fiserv”) investment support services business by acquiring all of the outstanding capital stock of Fiserv Trust Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fiserv. The acquisition added approximately $25 billion in client assets to TD AMERITRADE, including $15 billion held in more than 75,000 accounts managed by approximately 500 independent RIAs and $10 billion held in more than 2,000 plans administered by 80 independent third party administrators (“TPAs”). This acquisition is discussed in further detail in Item 8, Financial Statements and Supplementary Data — Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements: Note 2 — Business Combinations.

On January 24, 2006, we acquired the U.S. brokerage business of TD Waterhouse Group, Inc. (“TD Waterhouse”) from The Toronto-Dominion Bank (“TD”). The transaction combined highly complementary franchises to create a retail broker that we believe has the scale, breadth and financial strength to be a leading player in the increasingly competitive and consolidating investor services industry. The acquisition of TD Waterhouse provided us with a national network of over 100 branches, as well as relationships with one of the largest groups of independent RIAs. It also enabled us to provide our clients with a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”)-insured deposit account sweep alternative for their cash through an arrangement with TD Bank USA, N.A. (“TD Bank USA”).

Products and Services

We strive to provide the best value of retail brokerage services to our clients. The products and services available to our clients include:


•Common and preferred stock. Clients can purchase common and preferred stocks and American Depository Receipts traded on any United States exchange or quotation system.

•Exchange-Traded Funds. ETFs are baskets of securities (stocks or bonds) that typically track recognized indices. They are similar to mutual funds, except they trade the same way that a stock trades, on a stock exchange. We have launched an online resource dedicated to ETFs that offers tools, education and information for active and long-term investors seeking alternatives for pursuing their investment strategies.

•Option trades. We offer a full range of option trades, including spreads, straddles and strangles. All option trades, including complex trades, are accessible on our trading platform.

•Futures and foreign exchange trades. Through our TOS Inc. broker-dealer subsidiary, we offer futures and foreign exchange trades on the thinkorswim trading platform. Within the next 18 months, we plan to phase in functionality for futures and foreign exchange trading for our TD AMERITRADE brokerage clients.

•Mutual funds. Clients can compare and select from a portfolio of over 13,000 mutual funds from leading fund families, including a broad range of no-transaction-fee (“NTF”) funds. Clients can also easily exchange funds within the same mutual fund family.

•Fixed income. We offer our clients access to a variety of Treasury, corporate, government agency and municipal bonds, as well as mortgage-backed securities and certificates of deposit.

•Margin lending. We extend credit to clients that maintain margin accounts.

•Cash management services. Through third-party banking relationships, we offer FDIC-insured deposit accounts and money market mutual funds to our clients as cash sweep alternatives. We also offer checking and ATM services through these relationships.

Employees

As of September 30, 2009, we had 5,196 full-time equivalent employees. This number has increased from 4,660 full-time equivalent employees as of the end of fiscal 2008, due primarily to the thinkorswim acquisition. None of our employees is covered by a collective bargaining agreement. We believe that our relations with our employees are good.

Financial Information about Segments and Geographic Areas

We primarily operate in the securities brokerage industry and have no other reportable segments. Our revenues from external clients for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2009, 2008 and 2007 were derived from our operations in the United States.