Also it's being rolled out in the NE right now, only. It's smart for their full service brokers too, because when people get tired of trading for themselves or want to get advice they can migrate over to full service and get money managers, insurance, mutual funds, bonds etc. Makes that full or partial move to full service pretty painless. The funniest quote on bloomberg was pretty telling, E*Trade's chief operating officer, Jarrett Lilien:``It's a non-event, and all of this hoopla will disappear shortly,'' Lilien said. ``People distrust things that are free, and when they do the math, they'll realize that when you pay nothing, you get nothing.'' So, ten bucks a trade is really that much different?
Don hit on the head, it's all about short interest %/margin interest %. However, the smaller retail houses will not be able to compete and will either go under, change their model or get bought out. They don't have access to the credit faucet like the fed reserve system banks do. I read some articles month or two ago how the new outlet for the ongoing fractional reserve system scam will be leverage for the financial markets. This is just a sign to confirm it.