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To: Spytrdr who wrote (9878)	12/13/1999 7:46:00 AM
From: LABMAN	Respond to of 13953

Look what is happening in SWEDEN from REUTERS/YAHOO FINANCE Monday December 13, 7:17 am Eastern Time Swedish net share trading booms, brokers besieged By Paul de Bendern STOCKHOLM, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Online share trading in Sweden, one of the most wired countries in the world, is growing at such rates that brokerages are having problems coping with demand, brokerages and bourse officials said on Monday. Some 20 percent of all share trading in Sweden is conducted over the Internet, said Stockholm bourse spokesman Gustaf Sahlman. Market sources said they expected Web trading to grow to 50 percent of all Swedish stock trades by 2001. In an August report investment bank J.P. Morgan estimated the number of online brokerage accounts would reach 900,000 in Europe by the end of this year, with 400,000 users in Germany, 200,000 in Sweden and only 100,000 in Britain. ``Online trading activity in Sweden is growing very fast, and it's principally coming from retail investors,' Sahlman said. The explosion in online trading has come on the coat tails of a booming Swedish economy, strong gains on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and foreign markets and a surge in interest in Swedish technology and Internet stocks. ``The problem is that in last couple of weeks turnover from our customers has exploded, the bourse has exploded, everything has gone through the roof,' said Avanza brokerage deputy chief executive Sven Chetkovich. ``From Friday to Monday volumes have tripled. This has put strain on us in the industry.' Over 500,000 Swedes out of a population of 8.9 million trade actively each year, with over 70,000 people having option accounts, where they can trade in derivatives. ``We've got 54 percent of Swedes owning shares directly or through mutual funds,' said bourse spokesman Sahlman. Over 10 brokerages in Sweden offer online trade services, with almost half of them pure net brokerages. The high stock ownership originates in Swedish government incentives in the 1980s which encouraged Swedes to save in low-tax mutual funds. EXPLOSIVE BOURSE TURNOVER Turnover in November was the highest for the Stockholm bourse, with 314 billion crowns ($37.11 billion) worth of shares traded, nearly double the 167 billion crowns a year earlier. For the first 11 months of 1999 turnover was 2.30 trillion crowns, up from 1.67 trillion crowns in the whole of 1998. Retail customers have taken a fancy to telecoms giant Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson , which has risen over 84 percent since late June. But they have also jumped into Internet stocks like Icon Medialab which has gained almost 700 percent and rival Framfab , up over 300 percent rise in this period. Stockholm's General index has risen 34 percent since June. Nettrade, one of Sweden's biggest online brokerages and owned by Swedbank , shut the door to new customers from November 26 because of the huge demand. ``We've had to say no to new customers because we were getting around 200 new applicants per day,' said Nettrade chief executive Annika Fagerlund. ``Once we've got our systems upgraded we'll open for new customers in January.' Two of the reasons trade in Sweden is booming is because retail consumers have a wide choice of brokerages to use at low costs, and the availability of real-time information inexpensively. The bourse's Sahlman said real-time information from the stock exchange cost retail customers a mere 25 crowns per month. This did not include financial news but share information such as price quotes and volumes. Stock information that had a one minute delay from online brokers was free, Sahlman said. ($1 equals 8.462 Swedish Crown) Related News Categories: US Market News