Commission-Free Trading - What's next? Paying Investors to Trade?

This has been in the making for some time now. After all, various outfits have been touting the commission-free trading for several years now. In fact, Forex Brokers have stopped charging commission almost two decades ago. Now the major U.S. retail brokers Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and E-trade have all followed Interactive Brokers by offering zero-commission trades. These institutions still have a number of ways to generate income from your assets but the brokerage landscape clearly has become a lot more competitive. That also showed up in the double digit declines of their stocks yesterday and the market seems to have taken a negative view about the prospects of declining cash flows from commission income.

It will be interesting to see if this trend will eliminate the smaller brokers the same way it did in the online Foreign Exchange business in the early 2000's. Either way, the cat is out of the bag now and the inquiring mind is pondering what's next...paying investors to trade?