Why do so many electronic commerce wizards ignore the stock market? The Internet marketing bandwagon seems to offer more attractions for executives than for their colleagues in the Investor Relations function. Sure, there is a page for investors on most corporate web sites, but the interactivity and customer relations are nowhere close to matching offers for customers with credit cards at the ready!

Do not expect the stock market establishment to complain, because they stand to go out of business if retail investors and fund seekers begin direct communications in effective manner. The whole idea behind an Exchange is to provide for match making between people with surplus cash and those with bright ideas about how to apply such resources.

Things could change all of a sudden though. The stock market phenomenon is less than a 100 years old, though commerce is nearly as old as the hills. Come to think of it, customers buying control of their suppliers is no more than classic vertical integration! The stock market system allows you to put money in to enterprises and operations with which you have no associations, but how far is that a good thing?

The biotechnology sector, which has emerged entirely during the most entrepreneurial phase of stock market evolution, has been repeated victim to the whims of investors losing patience with technology for which they have little appreciation. Everyone cannot do a Microsoft or a google: innovation can take time. Most of today’s leading pharmaceutical companies have started their 19th century lives in generic waters which would attract only scorn today!

Regulators, it has to be said, provide top stock market values that retail investors cannot substitute on their own. No one can keep close watch on daily tactics in a network of sites such as is typical of even a medium sized corporation. A transparent and diligent watchdog service from any stock market is therefore worth more than its weight in gold!

Perhaps it is time for a virtual stock market system. An electronic exchange, at which buyers and sellers interact, with comprehensive audit services thrown in, could give established monoliths runs for their money! It would certainly level the playing field for small investors, eliminating most of the unfair information advantages enjoyed by sub-prime financial manipulators.