A swooning stock market and high inflation have sapped individual investors’ enthusiasm for buying and selling stocks. That was on display in earnings reports and financial disclosures from some of the biggest retail brokerages in recent weeks.

The average daily number of retail trades handled by Charles Schwab fell to 5.52 million in the third quarter, the lowest level since it acquired TD Ameritrade Holding in late 2020. At Morgan Stanley, retail traders placed an average of 805,000 trades a day in the third quarter. That was down 16% from a year earlier and the lowest level since the investment bank bought E*Trade Financial in late 2020.