One Hard-to-Believe Trading Fact
In the Robinhood era, it may be hard for some investors to believe that making a trade used to be extremely expensive. Transaction costs like bid/ask spreads and commissions used to be a lot higher. You could be starting out more than 2% in the hole the second your trade was executed.
The drop in commissions and trading costs was a tough pill for the brokerage industry to swallow, but the big exchanges like Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE) and Nasdaq (NASDAQ: NDAQ) have benefited from increased trading volumes. The increase in trading volume over time is so large that historical charts are done on a logarithmic scale. This is an instance where a change in an industry hurts one group (in this case, the stock brokers) but can actually help another group make more money (the stock exchanges).
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Source Fool.com
