Investors maintaining equity portfolios by buying individual stocks through a brokerage firm. The proportion of the US population directly invested in the stock market rose steadily during the 1990s. The advent of Internet-based no-frills (discount) brokerages offering low, fixed cost transactions has made trading on the stock market accessible to a younger mass market.
The collapse in prices of technology and telecommunication stock prices and general weakness of stock markets around the world in the early part of the twenty-first century led to large losses for many investors. This dampened the appetite of many to invest in stocks.