When in the midst of change and upheaval, it's difficult to
define precisely what constitutes a revolution in any area of
society, business or technology. It's easier when people agree that
they know one when they see one--at least until history confirms or
denies it.
By that standard, a revolution in securities trading has been
escalating for the better part of a decade. In the late 1990s this
was one of many industries and business lines touched and
transformed by Internet technology, but in retrospect, it was just
a hint of what came later. Some elements of the securities
industry's pre-2000 technological awakening--self-directed
investing, electronic communications networks, direct-market access
and cross-border, multistrategy and black-box trading--are visible,
even mature aspects of the industry today. But these, combined with
more recent and contemporary developments, add up to a new,
transformational explosion in market structures and trading
operations that may be looked back on, in ten years, as just
another turning point, as 1996-1997 appears to us today. |
