You could subscribe to a service and get pricing data and news. My father did it (with reverse effect) and I remember him using his fancy 9600baud modem to get

You could subscribe to a service and get pricing data and news. My father did it (with reverse effect) and I remember him using his fancy 9600baud modem to get his portfolio prices for the day (last 24h summaries, 5m and 1m candles). There was no Bloomberg but there was compuserve and AOL and usenet and various other forms of financial forums.