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Two former SEC lawyers and two computer experts are pooling their skills to create a place where small investors can trade stocks after market hours, just as big Wall Street firms have been doing for years.

With their start-up company, Eclipse Trading Inc., the four partners plan to hook up a computer system sometime this summer and create an electronic market for online traders.

More and more individual investors have been seeking to trade after markets close at 4 p.m. EST, a time that has usually been the exclusive domain of institutional investors. Such investors as Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. trade after hours through systems called electronic communications networks that match stock orders between buyers and sellers.

"All these (individual investors) are shopping, but the store is closed and we're looking to open up the store," Eclipse Chief Executive Officer Michael Satow told Reuters.

Eclipse, which was founded about two years ago, has already signed up two brokerage firms to use its IndivEX system, Discover Brokerage and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.

Tom O'Connell, executive vice president of Discover Brokerage, the discount brokerage arm of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. , said his outfit received about 40 percent of its orders after 6 p.m. EST.

"We think that there is a lot of pent-up demand that will lead to an explosion in retail after-hours trading in the very short term," he said. "So we're very eager to offer this type of platform to our customers."

Satow, who used to investigate insider trading for the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he hoped to sign up at least three more online or traditional brokers before the service's launch.

"We're in talks with several other firms and we have some verbal commitments," he said.

Satow said Eclipse would initially limit trading to 100-200 stocks that are listed on the New York Stock Exchange or the Nasdaq market. Trading would be held between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. EST.

"As our market matures, we will add more stocks and more hours of operation," he said.

O'Connell said Discover would not charge more money for executing trades after-hours even though Eclipse would initially be more expensive than other systems.

"We'll absorb the cost initially," he said, adding that he expected the system's cost to go down as volume picks up.

Discover charges $14.95 for a market order and $19.95 for a limit order.

Satow said Eclipse would charge brokerage firms anywhere from less than a penny a share to about two cents a share, depending on the volume.

He said Eclipse, which got part of its funding from Boston venture capitalists Polaris Venture Partners, would not hold any positions so as to maintain its neutrality.

Satow said Eclipse had a series of safeguards to ensure transparency and prevent market manipulation.

IndivEX would limit the size of an order to between 1,000 and 5,000 shares depending on the closing price to prevent institutional investors from dominating trading.

"It gives individual investors a chance to get executed because if a huge block order goes in there...it would take up all the liquidity and cause someone to get a worse price to get executed," he said, adding that there was no limit to the amount of orders one could make.

Satow said the system would also provide full order book access, letting investors see all the orders placed on a stock, rather than a single bid and ask price.

"It will give the full depth of the market," he said.

Satow's partners include Eugene Choe, another former SEC attorney, Michael Hermus, a former technology consultant at accounting firm PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and Stanley Leong, who used to work as a senior consultant for New York firm Gemini Systems.