Electronic trading

From the start of modern stock exchanges in the 1600s in Amsterdam and London, there were physical locations where buyers and sellers met and negotiated prices to buy and sell securities.

[4] Electronic trading made transactions easier to complete, monitor, clear, and settle and this helped spur on its development.

[6] By June 11, 1997, digiTRADE launched interest and touch tone telephone workstations for full service brokerage firms.

By 1998, digiTRADE had deployed internet and telephone-based trading systems for 51 financial solutions including Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Chase Manhattan, Chubb, CitiBank, Dreyfus, First Union, LPL Financial, New York Life, T.Rowe Price and Wexford Clearing Services.

Traders also increasingly started to rely on algorithms to analyze market conditions and then execute their orders automatically.

Similarly, B2C trading traditionally happened over the phone but brokers moved to allow their clients to place orders using electronic systems.

The increase of electronic trading had some important implications: For retail investors, financial services on the web offer great benefits.

Conversely there is concern about the impact of speculation through trading, considered negatively and of potential significant damage to the real economy.