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To: Dale J. who wrote (6208)	12/7/1997 2:44:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Respond to of 9124

Dale, there are some basic changes that have occured in society that make changes in the way the commercial financial institutions and companies interact out of line with reality. Many investors benefit from the in-depth information gathering and analysis the large borkerages can deliver. The brokerages/investment bankers have grown into huge financial players and marketing organizations for the stock market and will not easily give up their cozy relationships with the coporate world they work with and benefit on a daily basis. However, the public has become much more educated about investing through books, investment clubs, newsletters, better educations and courses, and, of course, the widespread and instantaneous publishing and interaction of knowledge and views via the internet. The assertion can now be made that the means are now available and growing geometrically for there to be no intermediary between companies and investors. Companies can realistically diseminate information through established newswire channels and can now ligitimately offer on-line conference call recordings, interviews, and Q & A sessions (whether live or answered from previously submittted questions). These new means can provide very timely equal access of pertinenet company information to all investors and investment industry professionals while reducing the amount of managements' time taken for such tasks using the current company->analyst->investor flow of communications. The problem is that the brokerages are very powerful vested interests. You can already see the slant they are putting on things: that information on the web is unreliable at best and commonly fraudulaent and manipulative. The investment community is opposed to the increasing interest the internet is having. Already brokerages are realing form the lower costs and cheap information feeds that investors get from on-line borkers. Eight to $30 per trade is a wide difference from what a full-"service" brokerage charges. You also see the slant that the WSJ, Barrons' and other popular business/investment papers have. Often they point out the rash examples of a few rotten apples as indicative of what investors can expect to find on the internet chat rooms such as SI and Motley Fool. They should be equally critical of the advice given out by analysts and should rate and analyse their motives as well. Some companies are making efforts to provide more information to investors via the internet but it is not typical - yet. I think individual investors should put pressure on managment to provide information based on equal access principles but think it will likley take hard fought legislation to get companies to comply. This is likely to be a battle that will be waged over several years. Or, perhaps, the internet is compressing the time it takes for social change.