Alex Stein, a principal at Internet brokerage consultancy Gomez Advisors, explains why these machines are not well suited to Internet trading.
So the Internet trading alternative was devised.
Mr Steffens's warnings about Internet trading seem less absurd than they did at the time.
Included in the businesses for sale was its Internet trading operation, EnronOnline.
Now he is fighting to stave off competition from Internet trading services.
He plans to avoid using special barter dollars in transactions, relying on Internet trading enhanced by new technology.
With little volatility to trade around, UBS started firing traders and switched off the Internet trading platform.
Schwab, a pioneer in discount brokerage and later Internet trading, has more than six million customers, mostly small investors.
Based in San Francisco, the firm also helped lead the rush to internet trading, and successfully became a kind of supermarket for funds as well.
AT THE peak of the internet bubble in early 2000, a collection of utilities, oil companies and investment banks founded, appropriately enough, an internet trading market, IntercontinentalExchange.
In the meantime, nimbler Internet trading companies, like Tradepoint Financial Networks, have offered pan-European electronic trading, particularly to retail investors.
