Role of Stockbrokers

The term broker has been used to describe financial transaction agents since the seventeenth century. Brokers are part of a bigger category known as investment bankers, a group that is also not new. Investment bankers have been around since at least the Middle Ages when they were responsible for raising the monies necessary for kings and queens to wage war on one another. The adjective "investment" describing banker only means that the banker focuses on investment as opposed to other banker functions such as retail banking, which deals with such things as checking and savings for the general public.

Modern standards are substantially less dramatic and violent. A stockbroker today is a person who has passed a test called a Series 7 Exam administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and, as such, has the necessary qualifications to buy and sell stock for his or her clients. A brokerage firm is nothing more than a firm composed of, you guessed it, stockbrokers.