nice article... especially the ending...
"We don't sell our customers' orders and then get a kickback for it," said Harvey Houtkin, head of All-Tech Securities and the widely credited "father of electronic trading." Houtkin said the 10-year-old firm places 6,000 to 8,0000 trades a day at its 23 offices across the country. The company now is looking overseas for future growth opportunities, he said, including Germany, Israel, Japan and Canada. Assuming its business plan passes muster with the securities regulators in those countries, Houtkin said, he hopes to bring All-Tech abroad sometime next year. He noted, too, that All-Tech tried to go public during the summer but said "the general brokerage community didn't make (the firm's) life easy." Now that an initial public offering is off the table and business growth is again the top priority, Houtkin said trading volume has doubled since the summer. With interest in day traders, Houtkin said he believes day trading firms are at the early stages of a long-term growth streak. "Wall Street is the ultimate game," he said. "People absolutely crave this and love what they are doing. The general population doesn't understand this. People love nothing more than their money -- maybe their children. It's a way of keeping score." |
