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Broker fees have almost nothing to do with it. They were low then too. Market just doesn't behave like it used to. In the late 1990s a stock might swing dozens of points in one day! and travel several points in minutes if not seconds. We would anticipate the effect of news and buy in before the bell or right after. Or a rumor of news would circulate and we would "buy on the rumor" and "sell on the news." I had day trader friends who had so much money into the market that when they would announce a purchase, we could look on Level 2 (a tool used to view bids/asks) and watch the price rise as a result of their massive purchases. Most days no news was needed at all - the hottest stocks, especially tech ones, would just fluctuate wildly and for the most part go up on a continual basis. When I would buy a given stock I was in for a wild ride and guaranteed a profit that day, as long as I got in on the right side of the swing, and even if I didn't, the stock would usually swing back in the direction that benefited me if I just held on enough hours, or worst case scenario, days.
This was back when you could purchase Ebay for an adjusted price today of under two dollars and see it thirteen times higher within a few months. Another massive trend at the time was QCOM. Before the late 1990s, QCOM was a stock that you could swing trade on - that was guaranteed to fluctuate between two very low prices. It was a stock that was going nowhere. And then it broke through in mid-1999 when it went through a 2:1 split, and within six months was twenty times higher (about thirty times higher than its average price before the split). Yes, those were the days. You could throw a dart board at the stock market and pick a winner.
The whole upward swing came to an end right around Memorial Day 2000. It was a steady downhill after that with the bottom being September 11, 2001. Luckily, I was just too busy with other business and sold all the stock I owned the week before Memorial Day 2000. I couldn't have times it better. I didn't get back into the market, other than a few profitable trades here and there, for several years.
Today algorithmic trading (especially high frequency trading) is used to shave parts of a point per trade, and do it repeatedly to add up to something worthwhile.
This was back when you could purchase Ebay for an adjusted price today of under two dollars and see it thirteen times higher within a few months. Another massive trend at the time was QCOM. Before the late 1990s, QCOM was a stock that you could swing trade on - that was guaranteed to fluctuate between two very low prices. It was a stock that was going nowhere. And then it broke through in mid-1999 when it went through a 2:1 split, and within six months was twenty times higher (about thirty times higher than its average price before the split). Yes, those were the days. You could throw a dart board at the stock market and pick a winner.
The whole upward swing came to an end right around Memorial Day 2000. It was a steady downhill after that with the bottom being September 11, 2001. Luckily, I was just too busy with other business and sold all the stock I owned the week before Memorial Day 2000. I couldn't have times it better. I didn't get back into the market, other than a few profitable trades here and there, for several years.
Today algorithmic trading (especially high frequency trading) is used to shave parts of a point per trade, and do it repeatedly to add up to something worthwhile.
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