J.P.Morgan opens fee-free platform for retail Equity trading.

Following Mutual fund business, Brokerage business is also suffering with decreasing fees, specially, Equities. There is bad news for small and mid-size players in the US. Chase, retail brand of J.P.Morgan Chase, opened new online trading platform for its customers with free-fee as much as 100 transactions. 

As a result, share prices of retail brokers in the US plunged. In fact, eliminating fees for the individual investors look like not a big problem for big banks like JPM, but it could lead to additional decrease of fee for institutional investors. Equity Brokerage business will be becoming harder and harder for the players, unless they are not the biggest banks like JPM or BAML which have economy of scale.

FICC Brokerage is becoming challeng to the banks too, but is not 100% electronic trading yet and algorithm trading is also limited. However, Equity could be 100% electronic trading. AI and electronic trading are decreasing rate of the fee continuously.