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Non-Tech : E*Trade (NYSE:ET) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Diamond Jim who wrote (6398)	5/11/1999 8:04:00 PM
From: let	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13953

Bloody fight among discount brokers seen A swift move to online trading by active stock investors has set the stage for what an analyst with Forrester Research (FORR: news, msgs) said will be "a bloody fight for customers." There are relatively few active traders left to attract to today's online leaders, the deep discount brokers, explained James Punishill, who released a study covering 10,000 consumers. Forrester estimates there were fewer than 4 million online brokerage accounts at the end of last year but that that number will rise to almost 10 million by 2003. Punishill said those he called midtier brokers -- E-Trade (EGRP: news, msgs) and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette's (DLJ: news, msgs) DLJDirect -- are the sort of firms will will capture the most online households by offering upscale investing resources and advice for a fee. Midtier firms, he estimated, will grow their customer bases by a factor of 10 over the next five years, from $106 billion this year to $1.5 trillion. In a related item, another research firm estimated nearly 15 million U.S. adults are involved in online investing activities. But Dataquest analyst George Barto said fewer than 4.5 million people actually buy and sell stocks online. "By our definition, only 8 percent of online investors qualify as 'heavy' investors, going online more than 30 times a month to perform investing activities," said Barto.