I never said it would not in 'some way be an exchange', I wrote that 'the way they are right now' they are outdated.
I figure buildings full of people and rooms full of traders are way past their expiry dates, if there is one thing that you could trade exclusively online it's stocks.
Of course I understand that you do not need reputation and so on, I already made it clear that ebay is a very imperfect analogy.
Currently there is much lack of transparency, stock market data is delayed from many exchanges to the general public, sometimes up to 15 minutes (for nasdaq, nyse and a whole bunch of others), people are riding in the slipstream of big traders because they have access to sensitive data. All that could go out the window (and the brokerage fees as well) by using a relatively simple in concept (but probably extremely complex in scope and execution) system that would take care of these functions automatically.
Redefine the stock market in terms of an API and let users either run software, use a website or have big traders write their own.
All the statistics would be live and available through the API.
Again, I realize that I'm just dreaming here but I'm pretty sure that if the will were there it could be done.
You do not understand what an exchange is. You have made up a mental model that is not even close to reality and are now arguing against that. Please do a little research before having an opinion.
What you are describing is actually a great deal like how many exchanges work. Open outcry pits or whatever are not the prevailing model. There is NO room with screaming people for NASDAQ.
The pricing data is delayed because it is free. You can buy realtime pricing data. It's hard to support a large infrastructure for free, of course, and you are making money on it.
Big traders, especially block traders, execute at least partially off-exchange anyway.
"All the statistics" are not necessarily stored or generated by the exchange. Other companies do this (Reuters, etc.) We had to calculate "all the statistics" ourselves when we did automated trading systems.
I'm not sure how APIs magically make all fees and costs "go away" in some magical fashion.
Currently there is much lack of transparency, stock market data is delayed from many exchanges to the general public, sometimes up to 15 minutes
No, there is no lack of transparency. You get what you pay for. If you don't pay for anything, don't expect real-time quotes. Wall Street is not Santa Claus.
I figure buildings full of people and rooms full of traders are way past their expiry dates, if there is one thing that you could trade exclusively online it's stocks.
Of course I understand that you do not need reputation and so on, I already made it clear that ebay is a very imperfect analogy.
Currently there is much lack of transparency, stock market data is delayed from many exchanges to the general public, sometimes up to 15 minutes (for nasdaq, nyse and a whole bunch of others), people are riding in the slipstream of big traders because they have access to sensitive data. All that could go out the window (and the brokerage fees as well) by using a relatively simple in concept (but probably extremely complex in scope and execution) system that would take care of these functions automatically.
Redefine the stock market in terms of an API and let users either run software, use a website or have big traders write their own.
All the statistics would be live and available through the API.
Again, I realize that I'm just dreaming here but I'm pretty sure that if the will were there it could be done.
BATS is a (big) step in the right direction.