No such thing as a free trade; American stockbrokers; Brokers' costs revealed.(Finance and Economics)(The SEC wants greater transparency in the prices of share trading. A new study shows how far "cheap" online dealing is from being a free-trade area)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, December, 2000

THE online brokers and electronic share-trading systems ( ECN s) that have shaken up America's stockmarkets over the past few years have one big selling point: they claim to make trading cheaper than Wall Street's old firms and exchanges ever did. The popular CNBC business channel runs a constant stream of advertisements offering viewers the chance to buy or sell shares for as little as $8 a trade, compared with the $200 or so that traditional brokers would have taken in commission not so long ago. But the current investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC ) into the commissions charged by some brokers for a share in hot initial public offering stocks shows that they can vary massively.

In fact electronic upstarts' true trading costs are...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.