For a long time fixed income trading took place over AOL Instant Messenger and later Yahoo chat rooms.

I am not making this up.

There were custom frontends that would enrich things like cusips.

Unlocked a core memory for me!

Anyone else old enough to remember scripting a tradebot in Asheron's Call?

I find it a bit less funny. There is this perception that what finance people do is super important and grown up but following a brief stint in the industry I realised it literally is just a game. We used to trade bits of stationery and trading cards for fun at school. They never stopped. The only difference is people who never consented to any of this are paying for it all, especially when it all goes wrong.