Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the

Believe it or not, in those far-off days, live share prices were quite a luxury for PIs, and I had always hitherto used a judicious mixture of the prices pages of the FT, Teletext prices (only updated every 2 hours in those days!), and furtive (while I was in the office) calls to Fidelity Stockbrokers’ Quote Line. Amazing though it may seem now, it was quite easy to make money on shares this way, and I really did have serious doubts about the cost of Market Eye – which in those days was virtually the only show in town for live prices. It was ?1300 pa for Level 1 prices (Level 2 then being a rather kinky practice reserved exclusively for City hot shots), which seemed a lot of dosh at the time.

Anyway, I decided to spend – or as Gordon Brown would doubtless put it, “invest” – part of the proceeds of my final redundancy payout on a year’s subscription to Market Eye. The "black box" arrived in mid-December 1996.

And from then on, I was well and truly hooked on the share habit, and have never looked back.

This all sounds fearfully primitive I know, but in those days, the idea of being able to build custom pages of favourite shares, and be able to monitor them on a real-time basis, with a ticker showing all the price movements to boot, seemed unbelievable – quite pornographic in fact.

Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the

Believe it or not, in those far-off days, live share prices were quite a luxury for PIs, and I had always hitherto used a judicious mixture of the prices pages of the FT, Teletext prices (only updated every 2 hours in those days!), and furtive (while I was in the office) calls to Fidelity Stockbrokers’ Quote Line. Amazing though it may seem now, it was quite easy to make money on shares this way, and I really did have serious doubts about the cost of Market Eye – which in those days was virtually the only show in town for live prices. It was ?1300 pa for Level 1 prices (Level 2 then being a rather kinky practice reserved exclusively for City hot shots), which seemed a lot of dosh at the time.

Anyway, I decided to spend – or as Gordon Brown would doubtless put it, “invest” – part of the proceeds of my final redundancy payout on a year’s subscription to Market Eye. The "black box" arrived in mid-December 1996.

And from then on, I was well and truly hooked on the share habit, and have never looked back.

This all sounds fearfully primitive I know, but in those days, the idea of being able to build custom pages of favourite shares, and be able to monitor them on a real-time basis, with a ticker showing all the price movements to boot, seemed unbelievable – quite pornographic in fact.

Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the

Anyway, I decided to spend – or as Gordon Brown would doubtless put it, “invest” – part of the proceeds of my final redundancy payout on a year’s subscription to Market Eye. The "black box" arrived in mid-December 1996.

And from then on, I was well and truly hooked on the share habit, and have never looked back.

This all sounds fearfully primitive I know, but in those days, the idea of being able to build custom pages of favourite shares, and be able to monitor them on a real-time basis, with a ticker showing all the price movements to boot, seemed unbelievable – quite pornographic in fact.

Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the

And from then on, I was well and truly hooked on the share habit, and have never looked back.

This all sounds fearfully primitive I know, but in those days, the idea of being able to build custom pages of favourite shares, and be able to monitor them on a real-time basis, with a ticker showing all the price movements to boot, seemed unbelievable – quite pornographic in fact.

Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the

Ten years ago, online share-dealing was rare, to put it mildly; and recalling what standard share-dealing commissions were then makes me wonder how I ever made any money at all! For instance – and this was quite typical – Fidelity Brokerage charged a flat-rate ?25 for deals up to ?2500, ?35 up to ?3500, ?50 up to ?5000, ?60 up to ?6000, and ... er, well, in those days I never dared trade above ?6000 because the costs were so great!

There was no spread-betting and no CFDs in those days, either. Nope, the opportunities for losing vast amounts of money were terrifyingly limited ;-)

The main way to "gear up" then was to buy shares on extended settlement, which of course can be still be done. I used to buy a lot of shares on T+20 – and sold quite a lot of those on T+19! Thanks to a helpful dealer at Fidelity, I quickly learned that it was smarter to trade on T+10 because most of those type of deals could be done electronically by the dealer while I was on the phone, together with price improvements; whereas all T+20 deals had to be phoned through to the market and one never got an improvement and even sometimes had to buy above the offer/sell below the bid.

I had discovered this mysterious thing called "Level 2" in 1994 when still at work. In those days, all shares – even FTSE-100 ones – were on SEAQ, and I had phoned for a quote on British Aerospace, which I was thinking about selling. The dealer had told me the price and, while I was dithering, suddenly said, "If you want to sell at this price, you’d better be quick – they’re all coming off the bid". Impressed by the note of urgency in his voice, I told him to sell, and when he had done so, asked him what he meant about this "coming off the bid" racket.

And he told me ;-)

And from that point onwards, until I got Level 2 a few years later, whenever I rang the broker for a price, I would always ask about how many market makers there were on the bid and offer. What a patient and tolerant bunch of people those dealers were!

Anyway, back to trading ... I began to really develop and refine my present style during 1997 and 1998: short-term trading based o