The changes will be minimal. Your overall investment strategy should remain the same. However, some procedural aspects of investing will change. You will have to get used to placing orders and receiving executions in decimals instead of fractions. And the quotes you get from your brokerage firm, whether electronically or through an investment professional, will all be in decimals.
Many investors already receive account statements with fractions converted to decimals.
Once decimal pricing is fully implemented, all prices in trade confirmations and statement stuffers will be in decimals. As a matter of fact, some newspapers already list prices in dollars and cents. A small number of stocks, and options on those stocks, will begin trading in decimals. Additional securities, including Nasdaq-listed stocks, will be converted in early 2001. The Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered the industry to complete the transition in April 2001.