And the source of all of the turmoil is none other than the Internet itself. Catalog companies may have to migrate to the Web to stay in business. Holy cow, talk about an industry's worst nightmare. Nothing can match buyers and sellers, the traditional job of brokerage, better, cheaper, faster than the Net. Oh sure, there are kinks.
Sites go down.
People can't gripe to their machines about bad execution. But these will be ironed out. Then the last remaining true profit center from brokerage, the credit balance, will just go away. I think it already is. It's why I predict there will be massive consolidation in the brokerage industry over the next few years.