Yuki, interesting points. I don't know what OpenTick's strategy is, but you can get real time intraday data for NYSE and NASDAQ stocks from them for $2 (two dollars!) per month. The bad news is their IB plug-in is very buggy and slow. The point is every time a company like eSignal increases their price (for service that is not all that reliable in my experience), they make it that much more attractive for competitors to jump in.
Chuck --- In [email protected], Yuki Taga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Interesting business. I suspect at these price levels we may see an > increase in competition in the near future, which should put a lid on > arbitrary pricing. Right now, it seems that there is simply not > enough competition. Eventually, cost of data should resemble > commission fees, which are in most cases pretty cheap. At least a > broker who allows you to trade on margin is accepting some credit > risk. These data vendors simply allow multiple computers to plug > into a data stream that isn't even theirs in the first place, and > then they sell it redundantly and rather dearly. > > Someday, I suspect the exchanges will get wise (after enough of them > go public). There is no reason for any data middlemen, let alone > layers of them (I think eSignal itself has a data provider, but I'm > not sure). In any case, middlemen stock-data vendor days must surely > be numbered. Right now it may be an easier revenue source for the > exchanges to just sell a limited number of rights to middlemen. But > anything that has a tendency to limit trading, and limited access to > information certainly falls in that category, limits exchange > revenue. Someday, they may figure this out.
