Pros:

• serves the need of independent and technically savvy investors, which with self-help products will make their own investment divisions.

• a cost effective way to streamline customer service to give investors more personal attention.

• an efficient model to identify those customers who are in need of assistance.

Cons:

• May become unreliable as the Net slows down in transmission time, or in case of systems failure.

• Could become less customer-friendly and more costly as additional features are added on.

• More people could abandon the electronic trade and shift to full-service houses because they need more hand-holding in a market crisis environment.

• First mover advantage does not exist. Its appears to be difficult to establish long lasting brand equity. Although the fixed cost of establishing a company could be high, nine million lines of software codes for e-trade, and therefore the sunk costs could act as a natural barrier to entry.

• The marginal cost of serving one more automated transaction is very small, thus a small company with a new software may not be able to profitably staff a self help desk full time. If help is subcontracted to a larger operation, by bringing many companies requiring similar functions under the same intermediary (such as a product help desk), or support customers in multiple languages 24 hours a day with professionally trained help staff. This kind of value is harder to appropriate, since there is not much advantage that can be built up over time. Unless the economics lead to a natural monopoly (marginal cost that never increases regardless of volume) there will be competition for the business. While the business could expect to encounter competition, the role for the provider of such product shall be filled, and the business will be a low margin business in the long run( a quasi utility industry shall therefore emerge).