not like anyone ever REALLLY traded at the "brokerage houses". the closest they come to trading is bilking the order flow and program trading. when they have a chunk of money they designated as "risk capital", they give it to hedge funds to manage cause well, their own traders can't REALLY trade. Just look at their in-house mutual funds, what a joke. Yea, here's the big secret, the big Wall Street brokerage houses can't trade. Maybe the actual Merril Lynch and Salomon brothers (people, not firms) traded long time ago but their firms have since foregone trading for less-risky activities such as IPO fraud, and investment banking powered by fraudulent analyst research.