630,000 stock trades a day online
By Reuters
Special to CNET News.com
May 4, 1999, 11:55 a.m. PT
NEW YORK--Online brokerages processed a record 630,000 trades a day in April, thanks to investments in companies that do business on the Internet, according to a report released today.
Online trading volumes rose an estimated 40 percent in April from an estimated 450,000 trades a day in the first quarter, said analyst Bill Burnham of Credit Suisse First Boston in a research report. The analyst based his estimate on a 40 percent surge in trading of shares of Internet companies, which he uses as a proxy for online trading volumes.
In the first quarter online brokers already processed nearly 50 percent more trades than in the last quarter of 1998, showing that Internet trading remains popular despite recent glitches and outages at major brokerages' Web sites.
Higher trading volumes should translate into fatter profits at Internet brokerages, but Burnham said it was too early to raise his earnings forecasts. The growth, however, should lend support to the "relatively high valuations of the online trading companies in the short term," Burnham said.
Shares of Internet brokerages E*Trade and Ameritrade rose today after losing ground yesterday amid a broad sell-off of Internet stocks. E*Trade's stock gained 1.4375 to 112.9375 and Ameritrade shares rose 3.7188 to 126.75 in mid-afternoon trading.
But shares of the nation's largest discount and Internet brokerage, Charles Schwab were down 3.0625 to 104.3750.
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