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omega struggles because they are a niche company
selling niche product, but thinking that they
are selling to the mass public instead.
check their balance sheet / income stmt. all
their revenue are burned into advertising. I
am quite sure that even without those advertising
dollar spent, the company will still hold onto
70% plus of their revenue.
companies like quicken will cease charging for so
little and offering a lot because of share price
pressure. They lost money last quarter and they
will lose even more if they stay offering things
almost free.
even yahoo is talking about quitting the free of
charge business ...
communism is a great ideal but always face reality
of running out of money first.
the interesting thing in this evolution of the
internet is where it is heading?
we have seen the blood shed in icompanies repeating
the move from radio to television, which caused
lots of radio station went under.
now could it be a simple repeat of going from free
television to cable tv, where people will eventually
accept paying for something is necessary.
another issue that is internet specific is that
it is merely a cycle thing to most computer
scientists.
every 10 yr or so, public will swing from more power
to a client node (PCs, past 10 yrs), to more power
to the servers (internet asp nowadays). It is not
a surprise because public do not understand that
server architecture and client based data processing
has their respective advantage.
simply put, server based apps are great for data that
needs to be processed, THEN shared, then processed
again, ... example is your banking information with
the bank. another example is placing your trading
order.
client based processing is great for data that needs
heavy computation and do not need to be feeded back
to the server for other clients to use. perfect
example is quotes. Another issue is secrecy. if the
processed result is valuable then the data is
preferred to be kept at the client side because
safety of the data cannot be guaranteed at the server.
example is a great trading system.
about trading cost -
when trading data is free, and transaction cost is
so low, trading becomes gambling for the mass public.
government will then intervent and change regulations
on financial speculations because when everybody
gamble, who is going to produce the breakfast :)
i have seen the legalized gambling of horse racing
in asian countries. 1/3 population of those countries
gamble in horse racing, just because they cannot
afford to gamble in the stock market. something
similar to the old saying that lottery is a poor man
tax.
I do agree that the mass public will stay trying to
get things for free and will try very hard to keep
it that way. But better and more superior tools will
stay as priced items for those who pay for it.
so the public will get trading for free in the future
but definitely inferior comparing to the best.
it is just capitalism at works :)
--- William Wood <wrwood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Take note of Quicken's monthly real time data prices
> (equities/indices/options - no futures): 19.95 for
> 50 symbols, 34.95 for 150
> symbols, 54.95 for 500 symbols. Includes basic but
> usable chart/quote
> software. Not usable by Ts but I think the data can
> be feed into Excel via
> DDE. Makes me wonder about the future of Omega
> [currently beta testing
> TsPro] who will attempt to sell data for 99 p/m incl
> the online version of
> Ts. The Quickens of the world will get better and
> competition will keep
> Omega struggling I would think.
>
> http://www.quicken.com/quickenquoteslive/
>
> My point is the cost of real time data is coming
> down. You can already get
> free rt data on a basic quote page from Datek and
> other sources. When the
> massive bandwidth that is under development arrives
> in a few years data will
> be even cheaper. I continue to predict it will
> become free. Trading is the
> only situation I know where you have to pay to find
> out the price of what
> you want to buy. To me that is absurd. Ultimately
> the exchanges/brokers
> will provide data free in an effort to attract
> traders. Remember we provide
> liquidity. They can't live without us. We can live
> without them. Just get
> a real job :).
>
> Contrary to the tongue in cheek comment of Lawrence
> Chan a few days back I
> love the internet kids and thier downloads of
> mp3s/mpegs/etc. These
> kids/gamers/even porn vendors and all other wasters
> of bandwidth are driving
> the technology for ever greater bandwidth. The
> optical network that is
> coming has capacity that is beyond imagination. LC
> is definitely correct in
> his formula: "public bandwidth = abuse = never
> enough" but that merely
> tells me to buy internet infrastructure stocks :).
>
> Bill Wood
>
=====
Lawrence Chan http://www.tickquest.com
Innovative Analytical Software for Trading Professionals
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