dsq, Nice thread; thanks for starting it. I enjoyed reading the posts and taking a trip down memory lane. For some reason, I thought mostly of the many absolutely hilarious things that came up over time.
======================= Old Time trading- first trade 6-14-89 Joab; That 8'' green screen was hi tek. I remember my first trade , but had to check my records for details. Fidelity Investments,phone order ,Time Inc was merging with Warner Bros Clipped article of Wall St Journal, thinking in '89 ,what a neat 2 year chart . Ticker then TL, only have the data i saved; my TWX doesnt even go back that far,TL is now a different co. I also remember my first chart analysis; wasnt too familiar with uptrends, so i ''figured'' i better sell it before it hits top of the 2 year news paper chart. Time frame has shortened some, especially since AUG; but still like research & short swing trading with trend,/trends & most gaps help.
for retail traders, it's much much easier to make money trading today than during the 90s. before decimalization, you would typically see b/a spreads that were 5-20% of the stock's bid. the mm'ers had you by the balls pretty much. imagine making money when a stock's b/a was 19.50/21.00. that was typical, esp. with techies, during 1995-99. also back then there was virtually no after-hours trading, and much lower liquidity on options and futures.
=============== HoundDog-Won; As far as before internet-1990 compared to 2007. Really rather trade now. 1]Mainly 20 years experience,20 years trend study,now; & nice now to have charts/cheap comissions/choice of cheap comissions. Not that decimals hurt a swing- position deal much 1.7]Still record end of day data by hand; but simply prefer candlecharts,available now, not then. 2.7]Actually if i could, i would probably trade as fast as Bright Bros Trading,but i got the turtle nickname as an insult, as a kid. LOL 3.8]And know now Blair Hull admitted ''slowest market maker on the floor''-everybody cant trade fast.LOL Thanks Jack Schwager 4.78] Also , in other words had too much ignorance before internet-1980's. Plenty of opportunity now just noted a liquid real estate & banking sector stock that lost 10 years worth of uptrend-in 2007 downtrend. Still down trending ..................
Oh, this thread really brings me back to the great market in the late 80s. I remember opening an account up at Merrill Lynch, one of the best for a retail investor back then. Three great trades I just pulled up from old archives: Bought Compaq in jan of 88 at 20 1/4, sold in feb for 29 3/4 (regretted this as CPQ went to 80 that year, settled down to 65 by year end) On recommendation of my dad, bought BFX (Buffton on the AMEX) for 4 1/4 sold for 8 in october One of my favorites: Bought 100 shares IBM at 128 3/4 in Feb of 88 and sold at 162 1/2 in october I also remember (and pulled up) the first trade I made using a computer. I was at my broker's office (still Merrill) and bought 100 shares of American Express at 33 5/8 and then came back in May to place another trade to sell at 36 1/8. The most interesting part was commissions, $127.50 on the first and second, $165.00 on the third, and ONLY $75 on the last (great deal, huh?).
I started actively trading in 1990-1991. I have done it for a living since 1997. My first trading rig was an Apple Color Classic using Linn Software's Ticketwatcher software hence, my screen name. The quotes came through a subcarrier of cable tv channel TBS. They were quite expensive, nearly three hundred month. BMI was one the companies I got quotes from. I used cell phones to increase my phone lines. One cell phone was dedicated to get call backs on executions. Brown and Co was my favorite broker before I went online in 1997-1998. It was fun back then and it is still fun today. The market will challenge you daily, and if you are not up to the challenge, too bad for you.
Obviously there are lots of em. Wanna hear something funny? I used to call orders in to the pits, day trading, the big S&P pre '87 crash days. Often had a few minutes before I even knew what my fill was. Total insanity compared to now. Went bust on my first attempt. Imagine that? BTW, I am another guy that used FM transmission of data (Bonneville), and paid about $800 bucks per month for it! I thought I needed all the futures exchanges at the time.
Ditto on that . Thanks for the enlightening history. I'd been interested in trading since the '70s. But I didn't start 'til 2001 - when it got "easier."
Just thought I'd mention that you could get quotes at home. I was getting realtime quotes via Quotron from a terminal in my home in 1982. It was a small terminal, only could show 5-6 at a time (as I recall) on the screen. If you wanted something that you didn't have on the screen, then you had to punch in the symbol and it gave you a "snap quote"....just a line showing the info. That little machine cost me $650 per month as I recall, in 1982. I could have gotten the bigger Quotron that you saw in the brokerage offices, but as I recall it was 1200-1400, which I didn't want to spend. I phoned my orders in to a desk in the S+P futures, the big contract at 500X the index. Commission was $15 to $20 roundturn, depending on who I dealt with. So compared to ES, the commish was $1.50-$2 roundturn. LOL. Cheaper than IB. Back in those days I charted everything by hand. OldTrader