Quotron was a Los Angeles-based company that in 1960 became the first financial data technology company to deliver stock market quotes to an electronic screen rather than on a printed

ticker tape Ticker tape was the earliest electrical dedicated financial communications medium, transmitting stock price information over telegraph lines, in use from around 1870 through 1970. It consisted of a paper strip that ran through a machine called ...

. The Quotron offered

brokers A broker is a person or firm who arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller for a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal. Neither role should be con ...

and money managers up-to-the-minute prices and other information about securities. The Quotron was developed by Scantlin Electronics, owned by entrepreneur John Scantlin. Scantlin had earlier developed a quotation device that used magnetic tape instead of ticker tape. Quotron's first major competitor was

Telerate Telerate was a US company providing financial data to market participants, specialising in commercial paper and bond prices. It was a pioneer in the electronic distribution of real-time market information in the 1970s. With its main innovation ...

, which was founded by

Neil Hirsch Neil S. Hirsch (June 7, 1947 – June 24, 2021) was an American businessman and entrepreneur. In 1969, he founded Telerate, a global communications network. In addition, he was the owner of Loanet and the patron of the BlackWatch Polo Team. Ear ...

in 1969 and later bought by Dow Jones in 1990.

Citicorp Citigroup Inc. or Citi (stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomer ...

bought Quotron in 1986. At the time Quotron was renting 100,000 terminals which equated to 60 percent of the 1986 market for financial data. Following the Citicorp acquisition, Quotron's largest client, brokerage house Merrill Lynch, decided not to renew their contract with Quotron. Merrill Lynch instead invested in a competing startup named

Bloomberg Bloomberg may refer to: People * Daniel J. Bloomberg (1905–1984), audio engineer * Georgina Bloomberg (born 1983), professional equestrian * Michael Bloomberg (born 1942), American businessman and founder of Bloomberg L.P.; politician and m ...

. Most computer screens in the 1980s were able to display text in a single color. Quotron screens had green text on a black background. The Quotron was the screen used by

Charlie Sheen Carlos Irwin Estévez (born September 3, 1965), known professionally as Charlie Sheen, is an American actor. He has appeared in films such as ''Platoon'' (1986), ''Wall Street'' (1987), '' Young Guns'' (1988), '' The Rookie'' (1990), ''The Thr ...

's Bud Fox and

Michael Douglas Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the A ...

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characters in the 1987 movie Wall Street. When the Bloomberg professional terminal launched for bond traders it had amber text on a black background. Quotron did not keep pace with developments in technology and the company was slow to move from a dedicated terminal to personal computers, as the proprietary

Bloomberg Terminal The Bloomberg Terminal is a computer software system provided by the financial data vendor Bloomberg L.P. that enables professionals in the financial service sector and other industries to access Bloomberg Professional Services through which u ...

overtook its market share. By 1994 Quotron had only 35,000 terminals compared with 80,000 for

Automatic Data Processing ADP, Inc. (originally an acronym for Automatic Data Processing) is an American provider of human resources management software and services. History In 1949, Henry Taub founded Automatic Payrolls, Inc. as a manual payroll processing business wit ...

and 25,000 for ILX, according to Waters Information Services. Citicorp lost money on Quotron every year and, in 1994, paid Reuters Holdings P.L.C. more than $100 million to purchase the ailing Quotron. Quotron then became Reuters' trading floor terminal, until it was superseded by the

Reuters 3000 Xtra Reuters 3000 Xtra was an electronic trading platform which was released by Reuters in 1999 and supported until the end of 2013. It was typically used by professional traders and financial analysts in trading rooms. It was superseded by the Eiko ...

and Triarch platform. Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg lead the trading floor terminal space today with 70% of the market.

References

{{reflist Technical analysis software Financial data vendors Market data