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<center>[Source](https://www.elearnmarkets.com/blog/stock-trading-fees-explained/)</center>

Some of you might be old enough to remember when it cost a lot of money to trade stocks.  Back in that era, one called a stock broker, literally on the phone, and placed an order.  Of course, before that took place, one would ask what the price was since the most up to date data was at least 15 minutes behind.  

News was another problem.  We got updated by reading the paper in the morning which told us what happened *yesterday*.

In the last few weeks, many of the major brokerage houses eliminated their trading fees altogether.  It is now free to trade stocks.  The prices before were not outrageous since it was only a few dollars to trade before the elimination of the fees.

This is the amazing aspect of technology.  The Internet is what made this all possible (coupled with personal computing).  

It is also how we see the opportunity for more to get involved.  Harking back to the days of $100 stock trades, it is evident that one needed to be playing with a large amount of money.  To have the trading fee amount to 5%, one would need to be dealing with $2,000.  

Immediate news and zero fees are changing the investing realm completely.  To give themselves an advantage, Wall Street firms are turning to A.I. in an effort to keep ahead of everyone else.

Here again, we see the opportunity for individuals to even the score.  As Artificial Intelligence spread to the masses, what Wall Street enjoys will be in the hands of everyone.  There are already a number of free or inexpensive trading bots that are available on the market.  Over time, these will only get better, offering everyone the opportunity to operate at the level of Wall Street firms.

Technology pushes down prices.  This is something that we have seen across many industries.  It is also going to continue.  Consider the world of real estate.  Transactions are very costly because of the fees associated with moving a property.  It is not a liquid market which makes it costly to buy and sell properties.

Digitization pushes things towards zero margin costs.  Once platforms are set up, the incremental costs are minimal.  This is what was experienced in the world of stocks.  To the brokerage house, the cost of trading became almost nothing once the platforms were created.

This is going to be a very important concept over the next couple decades.



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