That number could go up quickly - Schwab has links to 7,000 managers. Townsend's RealTick platform, by contrast, has been on many institutional desks for as long as three years, because it is integrated with the Archipelago ECN, which Townsend also developed. But usage remains low. They're people who tend to keep doing things the way they always have done them. Traders will get more comfortable with direct access and with electronic order entry in general, and risk managers will also become comfortable trusting electronic order entry.
Administration is already in favor from a cost point of view.
It becomes almost a consulting project. None of this would have a chance of coming together if day trading were not a raging success. That hyperactive group, who demand the utmost in direct-access capabilities, averaged 44 trades per day in the fourth quarter, up from 28 at the end of 1999. The remaining 99.7 percent of online investors reduced their average activity to 17 trades per year, from 27. Most of the major online firms acknowledge that volumes declined in January and February.