[imtringued]

They didn't. The difference between today and a hundred years ago isn't actually in what people did. It's how many people did a certain thing. Back in the day people didn't invest because they were farmers. Nowadays a lot more people live in cities and have a high enough income to invest it and this requires financial services to scale to millions of customers.

[drevil-v2]

I am pretty sure online share trading has been around since early 2000s.

[asdff]

With dumb commission fees and other policies that made it deliberately obtuse and painful for the retail investor. Even today, with any brokerage, you can't freely trade without penalty unless you pass the class based virtue signal of having $25k amassed in your investment account.

[drevil-v2]

If you think robinhood is providing their service out of a sense of Altruism then I have got a beautiful bridge I would like to sell you...

Read up on bid/ask spreads and market makers. It’s a pretty profitable business. Even more so than just charging “dumb commission fees”

And that $25,000 “class” limit, hahaha that’s like saying that payday loan providers are a community service.