Electronic trading, often called e-trading, is a way to buy, sell, and manage investments online. Early forms of electronic trading simply used computers to handle all the price and exchange rate information, giving bulletins on price changes and new offerings at regular intervals. Since the emergence of the internet, however, e-trading is more often used to describe any type of trading that occurs online through electronic brokers. Since its inception, e-trading has attracted millions of investors that rely on the accuracy, efficiency, and speed of the Internet to assist with better investing strategies. One of the first stock exchanges that had an electronic component was the NASDAQ index, beginning in the early 1970s. Not surprisingly, many of the stocks traded through NASDAQ were high-tech electronic giants, including most of the large computer companies. Since the system predated public access to the Internet, however, much of the business of trading was still done through brokers, phone calls, and physical orders. As more people gained access to the Internet in the late 1990s and first years of the 21st century, it became a logical step to put all the steps of trading online.