Your guides to a really great financial future. Tom and Don are talking real money.

Back in the 19th century, and I know this was before most of you were born, except maybe Tom.

I had to do it. I'm sorry, you do it to me all the time. He's not that old.

Pretty friggin' old, but he's not that old. Back in the 19th century, in the early 20th century,

a lot of folks wanted to get involved in the early stock market. They wanted to participate.

They wanted to bet on stocks, but they couldn't afford to buy stocks because back then to buy stocks, you had to buy a round lot.

That was 100 shares.

So $5 a share stock, $500 in the late 19th century, early 20th century, we're talking real money,

serious money.

That was an annual wage for a lot of people.

So they couldn't participate in the stock market.

So what they did, what some entrepreneurs did was they got a ticker tape from Western Union or AT&T or whoever, the little globe

machines with the tape coming out.

Pull the tape come.

Yep.

And they had a chalkboard and they had some seats and they had spatoons and called bucket shops,

I believe.

A bunch of old guys would come in and they would place bets.

Yeah. On the market. And then there'd be a guy reading off the tape going, oh, oh, this one's up. Okay, you win. But there was never any kind of

security traded. You just bet on what it was doing. It was like a casino. What was going to happen

to that particular stock at a particular time?

Yep.

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