Stock Price Charts

Stock market charts: S&P 500 DJIA How Did People Look Up Price Charts before internet access? Investing U.S.?

With today's internet sites allowing the ordinary investor to look up individual company's price charts, one can look up the chart history. But before the Internet was around, how did the ordinary investor access the price charts? I would think it was difficult to get the information unless you were a financial advisor or working in investment banks?

Public Comments

1. Automated telephone systems. Calling their broker TV financial shows (stock prices delayed 15-20 minutes, indexes about 1-2 minutes).
2. Barron's newpaper was the penultimate data service, but it is a weekly newspaper. The Wall Street Journal was a good source of data, then came IBD. I taped FNN (Financial News Network, now CNBC) on a VCR so I could replay it and get 30 min data on the Dow and charted it by hand for several years, until I finally got a computer in 1987. Barron's caught me up if I missed anything. Internet affordability was still 5 yrs away. A Bloomberg terminal at that time was about $800/mo, probably about the same now. It cost about that much for a T1 line to the internet, just a little faster than cable service today.