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Non-Tech : Charles Schwab (SCH) -- A tech-stock profile? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Al Cano who wrote (782)	7/8/1999 10:46:00 AM
From: stock_bull69	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1390

Online trading growth slows to 15 pct in quarter NEW YORK, July 7 (Reuters) - The phenomenal growth of Internet stock trading slowed in the second quarter in line with slack share volumes at the nation's stock exchanges, an influential industry analyst said on Wednesday. Investors funneled around 575,000 trades a day through the Internet in the second quarter, up 15 percent from the first quarter, said analyst Bill Burnham of Credit Suisse First Boston. The quarterly rise fell just shy of the industry's historical growth rate, but was far cry from the 47 percent and 34 percent jumps in online trades in the previous two quarters. "The last quarter was sort of a aberration. Fifteen percent is actually close to the historical growth rates," Burnham said. "Clearly it's lower, but what happened is that overall market volume (growth) was lower." Investors last month already got signals that online brokers would be hard-pressed to keep up their stellar growth rates when Charles Schwab Corp. <SCH.N> reported a steep 28 percent drop in trading volumes in May. The San Francisco-based company, the nation's largest discount and Internet broker, attributed the drop to declining volumes on the nation's exchanges. The exchanges still eked out small gains in the second quarter, thanks to record-breaking share volumes in April. The New York Stock Exchange handled 3.8 percent more shares in the quarter, compared with the second quarter. The Nasdaq electronic stock market posted a 3.4 percent volumes gain. The slower volumes are hitting alternative trading systems as well. Shares of Investment Technology Group Inc. <ITG.N>, which runs the POSIT stock order matching system, were recently downgraded by an analyst worried about future growth in share volumes. The slower growth rate did not cause Burnham to change his profit or loss estimates for the online brokerage firms he follows, he said. Investors, however, should not look for profits that far exceed analysts' expectations this quarter, Burnham cautioned.