Stock of interest - OXPS, maybe AMTD

Recently came across an article from Dow Jones news titled "Volatility a Boon to Options Exchanges". Quick summary, the Chicago Board Options Exchange noted its SP500 Index Options traded at a record 1 million contracts on Thursday and the International Stock Exchanges (ISE) saw more than 3.8 million contracts change hands on Wednesday - its 2nd highest volume. The ISE Chief Executive stated in a conference call that trading volume for the entire options industry is to increase when the market returns to higher violatility. The article then comments on that the violatility is inspiring some investors to buy put options to protect against further stock declines and that traders are selling options to take advantage on the rise in price that comes with increased violatility expectations.

All in all, regardless of who is trading what, it sounds like more trading = more commissions! Quick picking through the different plays, I come across OptionsXpress. They are highly rated for their stocks site and execution, and their numbers for April 06 shows that their daily avg revenue trades is at 31500, 89% higher than April 05 and 18% higher than March 06.

The concerns I have though is that the stock looks weak (broke 50-day, 100-day moving avg), 200-day is at $25, stock is already up 100% over the year, its seems to be stuck in a trading range that tops at about 32, its PE is higher than its competitors, and competition from other active trading services such as Tradestation, Power Etrade, and Ameritrade Apex. It's up 1.75% today but at a slightly sub-3 month avg volume..

Another interesting note, OXPS increased accounts 3% from March 06 whereas AMTD added less than 1%. Also, OXPS has 184k accounts with 4.2 billion assets and 125 million margin balance, AMTD has 6.1 million accounts with 266 billion assets and 7.9 billion margin balance.

I need to do more research, perhaps listen to a conference call, but this could be a nice buy. They have a shareholder's day on Wednesday morning.

I also have been looking at AMTD with the recently pullback lately. However, something spooks me about this stock (I heard they were slow in lowering commission/margins to be competitive,, not sure how the merger with TD is going to shake out, and they're giving $500 to sign up for Apex!?).