With stock trading over the Internet picking up strongly, online brokerages have played an increasingly key role over the past year in determining daily stock prices.

For example, orders received by Matsui Securities Co. over the Internet totaled 35,958 in February, up 92.6 percent over the year-earlier level of 18,666.

Although online stock trading is no longer in an adolescent stage, traditional brokerages still keep a low profile in such dealings, whose lion's share is still claimed by Net-only brokerages.

According to the Securities Dealers Association of Japan, Matsui now handles roughly a quarter of Net-based trades.

Until recently, major brokerages have stayed on the sidelines of Internet trading.

When issues began rising visibly on a growing wave of buying over the Net, however, major brokerages entered the fray as investors began placing buy or sell orders with them for those issues.

Accordingly, major brokerages often lagged behind Internet dealers in trading in such issues originally favored by investors with Net access.

For example, figures compiled by Matsui show the share price of Toyo Shutter Co., listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's first section, fell under 100 yen in August and were near 50 yen in November.

Toyo Shutter then began rebounding strongly and climbed back to around 80 yen in early December.

The daily volume of trading in the issue at that time still averaged only about 500,000 shares at best, some 5 percent of it handled by Matsui alone.

Later in the month, the daily trading volume in the issue exceeded 1 million shares and the price topped 90 yen toward the close of 2000.

Matsui's share of trading in the issue then often exceeded 20 percent. When the price of the stock topped 180 yen in January and turnover skyrocketed, Matsui's share of trading fell as major brokerages began vying for the lead.

Conventional wisdom holds that successful investors will shun the initial and final stages of a booming market.

That's exactly what Internet investors are doing.

The volume of Internet stock trading exceeded 40 percent of daily trading in the U.S. in 1999 and has topped 70 percent in South Korea. In Japan, it is expected to exceed 50 percent later this year.