97-2000 stocks would move 20 points a day. amazing time never been repeated but will do one day. Internet craze, year 2000 bubble, etc.
Back in those days, 1998 - 99, was there such a thing as a depth of market display? A price ladder that you click to place trades? Or did that come later?
I traded retail thru Datek. There was level II. I never used a dom to trade stocks. Orders were entered manually. Can you trade stocks from a dom now retail ? I have not placed a stock trade since 2004 so I would not know. If you want to see what the environment was like, check out high and low range for any index or stock for april 4, 2000. Spoos had a 7 % range and tech stocks were nuts. Yahoo daily range was 20+ % intraday then and pmcs traded in a 30+ % intraday range. I will never forget that day in my life.
Well in 99 I ws out Online trading which was renamed Hold brothers and we used Momentum and cybertrader. I used momentum becuase cyber was not s fast.
Cyber was my personal favorite. Until Schwab bought them out. Now it is marketed under the name StreetSmart Pro by Schwab. Order execution and cancellation very bad and slow. I got killed trading the opening with it and since dumped it. What a horror to see you can't cancel an order or change the price for 2 minutes at the opening! Caused me big losses. That was beginning of 2009. Now RealTick is my favorite. I think it has the best execution for retails.
The depth of market display in the futures market is equivalent to the Level-2 in the equity market. Level-2 was first offerred to retails around 96/97 I think? Something like that. You see the "depth" by seeing the price and number of shares posted by each market maker and ECN. ECN wasn't that popular at first but later became widely used. Can't click on a price level to place order. You have to fill in the info on an order tab separately.