Emerging Industry Overview: E-Commerce: Online Brokerages
Industry Snapshot
During the first decade of the new century, online brokerages began hobbling back toward the aggressive competition that characterized the industry in the late 1990s, when the stock market was soaring and online brokerages were all the rage. The earlier (2000) collapse of the stock market and subsequent shakeout dramatically transformed this once hotshot industry. Forcing about 100 online brokerages out of business and producing several years of losses, layoffs, severe cost cutting, and boosted fees, the shakeout left behind a handful of well entrenched industry leaders with solid foundations, although no...