Here's the weekend squawkbox summary of the online broker story:
"Weekend Squawk Box - On-line Brokers (EGRP, AMTD, SCH, MER, FMR) 3/14/99
Comments
Weekend Squawk Box
On-line brokers
Full services brokers going way of dinosaurs
James Freeman of Columbia Business School thinks that full service brokers need to evolve over next 15 years. Next 5-10 year could do OK.
On-line brokers such as EGRP, AMTD, and SCH are rising quickly. SCH surpassed MER in market cap, indicating that they had a more attractive business plan and could create profits faster
The on-line companies are getting more bang for their buck and taking market share, resulting in higher PEs and bigger market caps
On-line customers were projected to grow from 7.5 million in 1999 to 10 million in 2000
Adam Schoenfield of Jupitor Communications was even more bullish on on-line brokers. He indicated that top line growth was most important, with added customers Q over Q
On-line brokers were building brand awareness with names such as ERGP and SCH with full service brokers going away quickly. He thought that MER should be more aggressive in on-line plans and that they were burying their head in the sand with regard to on-line companies
The recent connection problems of the on-line firms will become a problem if they keep repeating, but the outages were really a measure of the swelling demand. He mentioned SCH, EGRP and FMR
When asked about a bear market and investors need for advice, Shoenfield indicated that a Bear market could reduce volume, but services such as EGRP and SCH did offer research, although it was in the electronic rather than personal form. He also noted that most on-line investors were not day traders and were investors who also kept tabs on Mutual Funds on-line." |
