Mention Gong's name in New York and most people know him as a premier designer, one of the guiding lights of Rare Medium (back in the day). Mention his name in Chicago and most people associate him with OptionsHouse, an up and coming retail options brokerage where he is the Director of Product Design. Gong, in the few times I've met him, always seemed rather down to earth for all the accolades he's collected. And in his low-key way he now commands great respect in two cities (and elsewhere, I'm sure). ...

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There is still plenty of opportunity for traders in this volatile market. However, an upward moving market tends to be better for clients and the industry.

Nevertheless, we will continue to do well since we focus on options. OptionsHouse also provides a value proposition of a flat-rate fee of $9.95 per options trade and a flat-rate fee of $4.95 per stock trade.

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Trading volumes are high in both stocks and options?with many options investors trading on volatility. We conducted a study that found 75 percent of options investors trade for short-term gains.

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Are you curious about the characteristics and behavior of online options traders? This week Chicago-based OptionsHouse, an online retail and institutional brokerage house, rolled out the results of its first annual survey and found that 91 percent of options traders are men and that 57 percent are between the ages of 45 and 54 years of age. They are also educated—76 percent are college graduates, while 32 percent have graduate degrees.

Most traders said they traded options for a variety of reasons. Nearly three quarters of survey respondents said they do so for short-term gains. Fifty-nine percent said they trade options as an alternative to buying stock, while over a third (34 percent) said they trade as an investment hedge.

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WHILE MOST STOCK MARKET PARTICIPANTS WERE ENJOYING the recent resurgence in stock prices or reminiscing about their painful decline 20 years ago, several online brokers were busy tweaking their price lists. Some went up and others went down.

OPTIONSHOUSE (www.optionshouse.com), which opened its virtual doors 10 months ago, has announced that it's cutting its commissions for stock traders from $9.95 to $4.95 per transaction. Options trades remain $9.95 per sale or purchase; both stock and option commissions are flat rate, regardless of the number of shares or contracts traded.

Says CEO John Hass: "As we build the business, our execution costs for stocks continue to fall" and the price cuts should allow the firm "to be more widely recognized for our ability to provide good value for stock executions." At the same time, Hass says that his firm is offering improved stock-trading tools, and wants to broaden its perceived expertise for those traders. "Our greater value-added, of course, will always be on the options side due to our Peak6 heritage," he concedes,"but we think we have some value for stock traders as well." Parent company Peak6 is an options market maker.

The flat $9.95 for options transactions is a pretty good deal, especially for traders of large volumes. Trading 20 contracts at rival optionsXpress, for example, incurs a $30 fee ($25 for frequent traders) versus OptionsHouse's $9.95.

Another incentive that OptionsHouse has launched to draw in fresh accounts is 50 free trades for new customers during their first 60 days. "Anybody who joins through the end of this year will automatically be enrolled for the first 50 free trades," says Hass. In comparison, E*Trade's 100 free trades offered to new clients is good for the first 30 days only. Hass says he thought 50 trades in 60 days made more sense because it gives the new customer about one trade a day as she checks out the site. Newcomers will be credited for the commissions incurred at the end of the 60-day period, so they should be sure to have enough cash on hand to cover their costs up to that point.

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OptionsHouse Inc., an online retail and institutional brokerage firm, today introduced its new $4.95 flatrate commission on all stock trades. OptionsHouse had previously charged $9.95 per stock trade.

"OptionsHouse redefined retail options trading by offering a true flat rate of $9.95 per option trade, regardless of the size of the trade," said OptionsHouse chief executive, John Hass.

Also new, OptionsHouse is offering customers of optionsXpress and other competing brokerage firms 50 free trades if they open an account with OptionsHouse by the end of the year.

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OptionsHouse Inc., the online brokerage founded last year by the options market-making firm PEAK6 LLC, cut commissions on stock trades by 50 percent and plans to increase its advertising to challenge larger rivals.

OptionsHouse lowered its fee on equities to $4.95 a trade from $9.95. The closely held company will also give 50 free equity or options trades to investors who switch their accountfrom other brokerages before the end of the year.

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Peter Lawler, Chief Operating Officer for Chicago-based broker OptionsHouse, notes that investors can use equity options effectively to hedge shares of individual company stocks within their portfolios and, at a certain point, depending on portfolio size, it becomes more efficient to use an index. Says Lawler, "Determine the correlation between your portfolio and the index ? what's been the return on my portfolio over the last few years, and what's the return on the index? It's a matter of simple comparison."

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OptionsHouse Inc., a Chicago-based online retail broker, late last month became the most recent firm to add a virtual options-trading tool to its website. The motivation for the online upgrade is unsophisticated investors who are interested in trading options but wary because they do not understand them.

"It is, of course, in no one's best interest to have an inexperienced investor tanking at the start; our virtual trading system allows them to get comfortable with our platform at their own pace," said Danny Rosenthal, chief executive of OptionsHouse. "It's the perfect training tool -- as powerful and elegant as the real thing but without the worries associated with risking your own money.

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The Europeans are coming, and for U.S. traders that is good news.

Ask Wall Street honchos what they want from a trading system and they won't even pause to reflect. Speed and accuracy are the twin goals; other features, they'll insist, are just icing on the cake.

Now Peak6, a Chicago-based options-trading firm, is laying the icing on thick in the form of a new professionally designed online trading platform, which it hopes will attract investors in a crowded field. "True, it was a risk for us to make this investment, but we had to differentiate ourselves from competitors," says John Hass, co-CEO of the fledgling OptionsHouse system, which caters to individual investors rather than Peak6's professional trader clientele. "And we thought why not design a better trading experience?"

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The Europeans are coming, and for U.S. traders that is good news.

Yesterday, Germany's Deutsche Boerse AG said it will buy International Securities Exchange Holdings Inc. for $2.8 billion. The deal will make the ISE the second U.S. options exchange with a firm tie-up to a European counterpart -- the first is NYSE Arca, the unit of NYSE Euronext. Executives at brokerage firms said the deals are good for their customers because they will increase the pool of potentiai traders.

"The more global the investment community becomes in U.S. listed options, the more liquidity there will be. To expand the user base through a global merger, I view that as a positive for our customers," Peter Lawler, director of institutional development at brokerage OptionsHouse, said of the ISE acquisition.

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OptionsHouse, a newly-formed electronic options brokerage arm of market maker Peak6, is planning to enhance analystics and hire trade support personnel on the heels of launching an institutional division last week.

OptionsHouse will be offering the electronic trading platform directly to institutions, as well as white labeling it to brokerages with a limited electronic options trading component. The company already sold a white-labeled version of the platform to Calyon.

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The newest player in the house is OptionsHouse, which was launched early this year and is run by option market-making and proprietary trading firm Peak6. OptionsHouse has some advanced risk-management tools, which might have come in handy the past few days, and offers an innovative flat-fee commission structure of $9.95 per transaction, regardless of the number of contracts. So for people who trade "size," this can be a great deal.

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TWO ONLINE BROKERAGES OPENED their virtual trading rooms last week, aiming to provide a new home for experienced electronic traders and their assets.

Market maker PEAK6, which provides liquidity for more than 2,000 U.S. and European-listed equity options, gave The Electronic Investor a tour of the new site just before it launched OptionsHouse (www.optionshouse.com) on Jan. 8.

The technology is impressive, especially for those interested in trading options. OptionsHouse features real-time quotes and options-chain lookups, which one would expect, but also has a variety of options-specific tools. The quote view shows price and size data for every exchange, and highlights the NBBO (National Best Bid/Offer).

Features known as the Call Spread Investigator and Put Spread Investigator scan U.S. listed equity options to point customers to spreads with high theoretical returns relative to their cost. A similar capability for covered calls finds those with high theoretical returns, or calculates the potential returns for covered-call strategies on stocks you like.

The order-entry screens are nicely laid out, displaying the real-time quote for every leg of an order, plus an estimated cost of the entire transaction before you hit the Trade button. Many brokers put you through two or three screens to get this information.

At Options House, a trade of up to four legs can be entered from a single screen. If you have a very large block to trade (more than 50 options contracts), you can request a quote directly from parent PEAK6 to ask for liquidity or price improvement.

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OptionsHouse, a new discount brokerage firm launched its online Web site on Monday offering stock and options trading at a simple, flat-fee rate to retail investors and institutions. Targeting savvy traders, the start-up is a spin-off of PEAK6 Investments LP, a Chicago-based equity option market maker based which leased space on the Chicago Board of Trade's original 1930 trading floor.

To differentiate its services from the pack of competitors in the options trading space, OptionsHouse is offering flat-fee pricing. It will charge a commission of$9.95 per trade - with no incremental per contract charges.

"We do offer a very competitive rate and do think it's fundamentally different in options trading," says John Hass, co-CEO of OptionsHouse located in Chicago. "All of our competitors charge a per contract fee on top of a base rate or a base rate with a minimum, so the more options contracts you trade the higher the fee."

"Just as OptionsHouse is simplifying its rate structure, it's also simplifying its technology for trading," he notes. The new firm is leveraging its experience with PEAK6 which had "great order routing, tools and infrastructure," to fill a void in the market for active and savvy traders, says Hass who is was a former partner with Goldman Sachs on the investment banking side in the Financial Institutions Group covering broker-dealers.

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The daytrader is back. And now, come along two new brokerages to mine the opportunity.

The fact is that hope springs eternal, atleast in the discount broker world. Despite a brutal pricing war in recent years, a decline in online trading that crimped profits at the biggest retail sites, and the industry's feast and famine track record, two new-discount brokerages aimed at so-called active investors are opening for business this week.

OptionsHouse.com debuted Monday offering flat fees of $9.95 a trade, regardless ofthe size of the transaction. Despite its name, the firm, a subsidiary of the market making firm Peak6, offers stock and options trading services. Options are becoming increasingly popular with retail investors who want to hedge their stock trades or dabble in a new market.

"We still see there being a tremendous opportunity," says John Hass, a former Goldman Sachs Partner who is co-CEO of OptionsHouse. "There really isn't anything for retail that is user-friendly and has a pricing structure that fits."

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Online brokerage OptionsHouse, Inc., a subsidiary of private options firm PEAK6 Investments, L.P., said on Monday it has launched a platform offering clients a standard flat fee for all options and stock trades.

The commission on each trade will be $9.95, regardless of size, OptionsHouse said.

The new brokerage hopes to differentiate itself in the crowded options trading segment of the securities industry with a platform that allows traders to analyze trades and execute orders in less time with fewer clicks.

"We are still at the beginning of what will be a very long trend in growth in retail options trading," OptionsHouse co-Chief Executive John Haas told Reuters. "We believe there is room for a broker serving savvy option and stock traders."

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