Daily Average Revenue Trades - DARTs

Daily Average Revenue Trade (DART) is a metric used in the brokerage industry. It represents average trades per day that generate commissions or fees.

The DART is closely monitored by analysts who follow the brokerage industry because it measures how well a brokerage is doing in generating revenue from commissions. Commissions are a significant source of profits, especially for discount brokerages, and can, therefore, be used to predict quarterly earnings. Increasing DART values suggest that earnings will be strong while a declining DART indicates that earnings may decline.

To learn more about DARTs, check out What does the Daily Average Revenue Trade (DART) tell me about a brokerage?

Industries typically have their own non-financial operating metrics that indicate how a company is performing. In the retail industry, for example, companies report "same-store sales," representing how stores that were open for a full 12 months in the past year have performed. Sales per square foot is another measure retailers employ to gauge single-store performance. In the hotel industry, RevPar, or revenue per available room, is a common operating metric, and in the airline industry, carriers typically report their revenue per seat/mile along with standard financial results. Operating metrics such as these enable analysts and others to compare performance across companies and assess the direction of performance trends.