Migration also makes it more difficult for countries to sustain a fully-fledged local
stock exchange. As trading volumes further decrease, financing the fixed overhead of
maintaining market oversight, clearing, and settlement systems, among others, and
generating enough order flow for local brokers and enough business for local investment
banks, accounting firms, and other supporting services will become even harder,
especially for smaller emerging markets. The trend towards increased migration will thus
make it more difficult for small exchanges to survive (see also Lee and Steil 2002). This is
already reflected in the drive for mergers among many developed countries, particularly in
Europe. This consolidation of trading systems, spurred in part by technological advances,
is not new. It occurred in the U.S. over the last 100 years: there were close to 200 stock
exchanFes in the U.S. at the start of the 20th century, but there are only about half a dozen
today. ' Surprisingly, stock exchanges in emerging economies have not yet participated in
this trend, although they are possibly more at risk given their smaller size and worse legal
and financial infrastructure. Clearly, however, pressures to do so will increase and, as
technology advances, the ability to interlink trading systems to varying degrees remotely
will increase.