The future trend in the near term is for brokerage firms, both new and old, to greatly reduce their fees. According to investment editors at Thomson Reuters, individual investors will benefit from much lower costs of investing because of two technology trends playing out today: greater use and access to the Internet, and an improvement in investing-related software that enables users to build and analyze what used to be rather complex investment portfolios. New start-up online brokerage firms are beginning to offer super-discounted fees, and now may compete with some of the largest online discount brokerage firms.