TD Waterhouse Group Inc. is confessing to continued tough times for its business.

The online brokerage reports that in the past month, total customer assets have slipped another 1% to US$139 billion, down 16% on the year.

Total trades per day averaged 100,500, down 15% from May and 35% lower than June 2000. During the first part of July, trades per day declined a further 15% from June levels.

New account openings totalled 34,500 in June, down 5% from May and 38% lower than last June. Margin loans were US$4.4 billion, down from US$4.5 billion in May and down from US$8.8 billion last June.

“Since our last monthly report, we’ve seen further deterioration in investment and trading activity among individual investors. This has been exacerbated by the historical summer slowness our industry experiences,” says Steve McDonald, the firm’s CEO.

McDonald says, ” In response, we continue to implement the cost cutting measures and revenue raising initiatives that are part of our plan to increase annualized pre-tax income by US$200 million. However, we acknowledge it will take longer than expected to realize the plan’s benefits, as continuing declines in investment and trading activity are offsetting the anticipated increase in revenues. Independent of market conditions, we also continue to focus on deploying technology that is intended to improve our bottom line.”