In college, my roommate and I shared the cost of annual newspaper subscription to the Chicago Tribune. He would take the sports section every morning while I grabbed the business section. I wanted the business section because I wanted to check the closing stock price of the companies I had invested in. Back then, the business section would have the previous day closing prices of all the NYSE and American Exchange stocks. It would have the high and the low price of the day and the price it closed at. That's the best you could do. If you wanted to know the current stock price, you had to pick up a landline phone and call your broker and ask him in person. Back then, there was also no decimal pricing for stocks. Stocks traded in fraction of prices. 1/8 of $1 was the smallest bid/ask spread.
Stock commission was also expensive. There were only like 2 or 3 different discount brokerages. Everyone else was full commissioned brokerage. I was with Waterhouse Securities discount broker, and they charged like $55 to buy and $55 to sell. While that was expensive, that was far better than like $200+ charged by companies like Merrill Lynch. I remember how happy I was when Waterhouse Securities rolled out phone automated stock and option quote, buy, and sell. The buy and sell commission using the automated service was $35 per transaction which saved me great deal of money in paid commission. I remember buying and selling stocks from street pay phones. When I look back at it now, it's wild all the technology we have today with the smartphones and all the realtime quotes and free stock/option. With Interactive Brokers Pro account, I literally have the power to trade the world market 24/7 and can trade futures, Forex, commodities, everything on my iPhone. It's wild. Internet has to be the greatest invention of the 20th century.
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