The History of Automation and
On-line Trading of the Stock Market
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The roots of electronic trading got its start in 1983 by bringing real time quotes to brokerage houses via the Internet. Bill Porter, a physicist and inventor, created the first early on-line investment service which provided on-line quotes and trading services to Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Quick & Reilly. This led Bill to wonder why, as an individual investor, he had to pay a broker hundreds of dollars for stock transactions. He wondered why anyone would need a broker if they had access to real time market data and a reliable way to execute trades. With incredible foresight, he saw the solution at hand: Someday, everyone would own computers and invest through them with unprecedented efficiency and control. It would take years for the world to catch up with Bill's vision.
K. Aufhauser & Co., Inc. was the first brokerage firm to offer trading via their WealthWeb, an earlier form of the World Wide Web. K. Aufhauser was bought out by Ameritrade later. In 1992, E*TRADE Securities, Inc., the original all-electronic brokerage house, was founded and began to offer online investing services through America Online and CompuServe. Then, with the launch of www.etrade.com in 1996, demand for online services exploded. A revolution was born.
Along with this
immense advancement in technology came the automation of information.
Today any Internet user can log on to the World Wide Web and obtain anything
from business news to personal websites. This incredible excess
of information gives the average investor much more knowledge today
than previously.
