E-Commerce Stock Watch: Another Day, Another Outage

Charles Schwab's online trading system was down for about an hour Wednesday morning. The problems at Schwab (NYSE: SCH) should have investors wondering if any online broker is completely dependable. Three weeks ago, E*Trade (Nasdaq: EGRP) suffered service outages on three days. And other brokers, including Ameritrade (Nasdaq: AMTD) and Datek have also had problems this month.

Any day trader knows how frustrating -- and costly -- even a minor slowdown can be. It might be time to consider using online investment banks for some investments. These investment banks also offer a wider variety of trading options. Wit Capital and WR Hambrecht + Co. are two possibilities.