Was anyone here trading in the late 90s?

yeah, i read harvey's book about it years ago...and remember that a stock like CMRC might have a 2 or 3 point *spread*. that wasn't one of those biotechs, but same principle...

 

I was with All-Tech in the 90's - Harvey Houtkin's ("the father of Day Trading") firm. We had decent technology. It was $25 each way plus ECN charges. ISLD was $1 and INCA was a penny and half per share. Other ECN's popped up later on including ATTN, which was Houtkin's.

 

What was more pathetic was when the MM's could only quote 100 shares rather than 1000.

I loved using SelectNet to hammer a MM and see if he had any real size.

 

And the "father" (Harvey Houtkin) of SOES Bandits died in summer 2008 -- was only 59.

 

Lombard then Datek and Fidelity. Those were the days.

 

I started with Quick and Reilly "deep discount broker". Something like $70.00 commission per trade. Hey... that WAS Deep Discount at the time. Then I moved to Jack White & Company. Something like $30 per trade. Still steep.

Then I had tried E-Trade, Lombard, Ameritrade, Datek, Scottrade, etc. over the years. I know there are a lot of viewers here using Scottrade. But I am not impressed with them. Years ago... I tried to use my Scottrade account to short Intel (INTC). They said "no inventory". WHAT? If you can't short a stock as thick as Intel, what stock can you short??? No more Scottrade for me from that point.

I started using Direct Access Platforms like RealTick and CyberTrader. I really like Cyber. But Schwab bought them out a few years ago. And Schwab managed to turn the Cyber platform into shit.

Nowadays: 16 years into my trading journey... I use only RealTick and TradeStation. TradeStation for charting. RealTick for level 2 and order executions.

I may as well keep trading into my late 90s.

 

Started trading stock options during the mid seventies. Had a quotron machine and direct line (red phone) to my broker.

Late 90's, good ol' days? Pfff whadeva!

Rennick out

 

16 years is a long time, by now I'm sure you have experienced all the types of markets. I work with several long time traders who say their income decreased with experience as they learned to make less trades. I'm curious to know if your trading income has improved with experience in the markets?

 

Datek, yeah, I recall that the market would get busy and then I would get logged out for no reason and could not log back in for long minutes..

 

from mid 90s microhedge ,aspen research ,and in house.