Schwab Institutional rolled out a new trading tool this week that's incorporated on its website and is provided free of charge to all Schwab Institutional advisors. The applet, known as Schwab Institutional Portfolio Rebalancer, can be found under the Trade tab of www.schwabinstitutional.com.

Portfolio Rebalancer was developed for Schwab Institutional by Advisor Software, Inc., the firm that developed a similar tool for TD Ameritrade Institutional. One big difference between the two products is that TD Ameritrade's version uses once-a-day data that reflects prices at the close of the prior day's business.

Schwab's product uses near real-time data from the Schwab Institutional website. When the Portfolio Rebalancer is launched, the data on Schwab's website at that moment is fed into the application; if the information on the website changes after the Portfolio Rebalancer is launched, the data within the application is not automatically updated.

"We had a great beta test period over the last few months," says Dan Skiles, Schwab Institutional's vice president of client technology consulting. "It takes some time for advisors to familiarize themselves with the software and to upload their models to it, but once they are engaged with the software, the feedback has been very positive."

Schwab Institutional plans to contact RIA's on a rolling basis during the next few weeks, but the tool is now available to anyone with access to the website, provided their firm grants them permission to use the tool. For more information, visit www.schwanstitutional.com.