WIRELESS SERVICES
You're soaking up rays at the beach when a beep prompts you to pull out your pager. It's a message from Fidelity's InstantBroker service. Another perfect storm's hit the market, and one of the stocks you've been watching has surfaced at a bargain price. No sweat - you simply tap a few keys and catch the wave.
InstantBroker, free with a Fidelity brokerage account ($2,500 minimum) and compatible with Web phones, two-way pagers, and the Palm VII, leads by a whisker in the breakneck rollout of wireless trading. Offering real-time quotes, alerts, margin notifications, and a free RIM Inter@ctive Pager 950, it beats competitors like Schwab PocketBroker, which requires a $10,000 minimum balance and 12 trades a year.
But before you cut the cord, consider the downside. Your RIM 950 can't tell you what's behind the price drop - a fortuitous dip in the market or news that the company you're about to buy was caught burying $10 billion in losses. If you were using a wireless PDA or Web phone, you could get the skinny from a financial news site - but then you wouldn't get an alert without checking your email, because those devices aren't push-capable. And don't forget the unreliability and cost of a wireless Net connection (between $10 and $400 a month from BellSouth, Celltrader.com, palm.net, Sprint PCS, or Verizon).
"Right now, wireless trading is a great extension to online financial services, but it's got a ways to go before it becomes a stand-alone service," concedes Joseph Ferra, senior VP of Fidelity Online Brokerage.
Meanwhile, everyone's scrambling to cover the remaining distance. Brokers have the first-to-market edge, but look for banks like BofA, Citibank, and Wells Fargo to get into the act by year's end with wireless links between checking and trading accounts. And don't be surprised to see portals like Yahoo! partnering with both brokers and banks.
When the dust settles, according to Maribel Lopez, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, services will become much more "action-oriented." In addition to telling you that a stock has reached your bid price - and why - wireless services will offer advice: Not only shouldn't you buy, you should consider selling shares of related companies. And, by the way, you'd better transfer the proceeds to your bank. You're about to bounce a check.
- Andrew Marks (amarks@nyc.rr.com)
Fidelity: www.fidelity.com.
NEW MONEY
