Was anyone here trading in the late 90s?

[tman]

Traded options thru Brown & Co. George Brown used to sign my checks. Good times.

 

[Moreagr]

my first trade...called a broker to buy 200 shares of stock cost me $79.95 during 1996

 

[Clubber Lang]

Cybertrader, Real Tick charts, Instinet green box terminal (shared with another trader).

Remember having to manually input all your Instinet orders and then staying after work to sort them out into the proper accounts?

 

[Bolimomo]

Quote from noobtrader:

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?

I found that my income does not directly increase with experience in the markets, but directly with the volatility of the markets. I did well in 2007, then exceptionally well in 2008. 2009 good but not as good. This year it dried up. I could not adapt fast enough.

Experience in the markets does help me in that I don't die from big losses.

 

[illiquid]

Quote from DHOHHI:

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.

Same here, traded at the main branch in Montvale NJ. Did you take the boot camp classes with Jay and Manny?

 

[BigSalad]

Traded with Realtick. Those were the days when you could make 3/16 in twenty seconds.

 

[McCloud]

MB Trader, Datek, IB and Trade Station for charting....

 

[kandlekid]

Waterhouse Securities PAW (Personal Access for Windows), which I helped develop. Waterhouse then became TD Waterhouse, which became TD Ameritrade. PAW had long ago been abandoned for web based trading.

 

[jagadish]

Just curious to know, what % of Americans invest via stock markets?

 

[DHOHHI]

Quote from illiquid:

Same here, traded at the main branch in Montvale NJ. Did you take the boot camp classes with Jay and Manny?

I was in the office in Detroit suburbs. We had some guys from NJ come to the office a few times for some training and some traders went to headquarters for the longer term boot camp.

I told them if they mandated the training I was trading elsewhere as I'd traded part time prior to leaving my job the previous year. So they gave me a pass and I started trading 200 share lots for a couple bucks. Left them (All-Tech) sometime around 2000 I think. The office was fun but after I went remote I found a lot more benefits to being at home. I did miss seeing guys either ranting over losing trades or acting like they'd won the lottery when they had a really profitable trade.