Financial education and tools portal gets a look from the SEC.
Investools (NASDAQ: SWIM, Bullboard) provides education tools and research for investors who tend to do their own trading. The company trades at just over $8, which puts it toward the low end of its $18.23/$6.90 52-week range.
Investools claims that April was a good month. The firm opened 10,050 new accounts during April and hosted an average of 48,400 trades a day, more than double last year.
What might be an attractive business is being undermined by an "informal" SEC look into some of the company’s statements at its education seminars. If the investigation is ratcheted up, it's real trouble. If it is dropped the shares could rally. Two brokerages downgraded the stock on the news.
Investools itself is doing quite well. In the first quarter revenue was up 39% to $91 million. The company had net income of $12 million for the period up from a net loss of almost $20 million in the year ago period.
The firm could do very well, but investors have to watch two things. The first is whether the SEC news gets worse and the other is if an economic downturn or stock market drop hurts the company's financial education business.
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