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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1287178, member: 27832&quot;]This doesn&#039;t resonate for me. For retail goods, Internet sellers can cut out the middleman or cut out the expense of B&amp;M storefronts, reducing margins -- but &quot;consumers&quot; don&#039;t have visibility into the pricing structure, the way they do with PMs, which have their spot prices posted widely in real time.</p><p><br /></p><p>What I&#039;d expect to see is &quot;customers&quot; less willing to pay a huge markup over spot when buying, AND less willing to accept a huge discount when selling. In other words, I&#039;d expect a general tightening of margins, but not general downward pressure on prices.</p><p><br /></p><p>To put it another way, has the explosion of online trading services driven down the price of stocks? Not as far as I can tell. It may have driven down <i>commissions</i>, but I think the effect on prices is generally symmetrical (downward pressure and upward pressure balance).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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