Wall Street’s Smallest Traders Hardest Hit

Wall Street’s smaller stock traders are throwing in the towel as their fees fail to recover from a three-year slump in equity volume and a shift to computer-driven transactions, Bloomberg reports…... ThinkEquity LLC, the San Francisco-based investment bank, said yesterday its stock-trading business will close. Oscar Gruss & Son Inc. halted merger-arbitrage operations on Oct. 12. Rodman & Renshaw LLC, which acquired brokerage Hudson Holding Corp. last year, told regulators in a September filing that it didn’t have enough capital and would stop trading…… Commissions are drying up for brokers who complete trades by phone or sell research as money managers buy and sell fewer securities and execute more transactions electronically. Average daily volume for U.S. equities has dropped 36 percent since 2009. The average fee to trade a share of stock fell 31 percent in the period, according to Investment Technology Group Inc…............................................................................................................ Read all about it at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/smallest-stock-traders-hardest-hit-as-commissions-decline.html