2001           CHAPTER 3 How Securities Are Traded 85     The commission schedule for trades in common stocks for one prominent discount bro- ker is as follows:     Transaction Method Commission   Online trading $20 or $0.02 per share, whichever is greater Automated telephone trading $40 or $0.02 per share, whichever is greater Orders desk (through an associate) $45 $0.03 per share     Notice that there is a minimum charge regardless of trade size and that cost as a fraction of the value of traded shares falls as trade size increases. In addition to the explicit part of trading costs-the brokers commission-there is an implicit part-the dealers bid-asked spread. Sometimes the broker is a dealer in the se- curity being traded and will charge no commission but will collect the fee entirely in the form of the bid-asked spread. Another implicit cost of trading that some observers would distinguish is the price con- cession an investor may be forced to make for trading in any quantity that exceeds the quantity the dealer is willing to trade at the posted bid or asked price. One continuing trend is toward online trading either through the Internet or through software that connects a customer directly to a brokerage firm. In 1994, there were no on- line brokerage accounts; by 1999, there were around 7 million such accounts at "e-bro- kers" such as Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, and E*Trade, and roughly one in five trades were initiated over the Internet. Table 3.8 provides a brief guide to some major on- line brokers. While there is little conceptual difference between placing your order using a phone call versus through a computer link, online brokerage firms can process trades more cheaply since they do not have to pay as many brokers. The average commission for an online trade is now less than $20, compared to perhaps $100-$300 at full-service brokers. Moreover, these e-brokers are beginning to compete with some of the same services of- fered by full-service broker such as online company research and, to a lesser extent, the op- portunity to participate in IPOs. The traditional full-service brokerage firms are responding to this competitive challenge by introducing online trading for their own customers. Some of these firms are charging by the trade; others plan to charge for such trading through fee- based accounts, in which the customer pays a percentage of assets in