Robert Heller, author of The Age of the Common Millionaire and a millionaire himself, thanks to investments in the London real estate market, once said: "People who think making a million is difficult haven’t tried."

These days, many investors are making money in the financial markets. In fact, the rapidly growing importance of individual investors along with the evolution of technology was one of the most remarkable developments in the world’s financial markets during the twentieth century. For most of the century, individual investors were at the back of the line in Wall Street’s pecking order, well distanced from the powerful institutional investors who controlled the financial markets. Banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and other institutional powerhouses controlled the bulk of the money. They traded heavily, and they earned the undivided attention of brokers and other financial services providers.

Not too long ago, middle-income people rarely participated in the stock market. Their retirement savings were usually handled through their employer’s pension fund, Social Security was regarded as a future financial "cushion," and savvy workers made regular deposits into "rainy day" savings accounts at banks. Investments in capital markets were largely limited to the wealthiest earners or inheritors. But several major developments led to a dramatic increase in the proportion of the population that became participants in the stock market: (1) savers became investors; (2) mutual funds grew and blossomed; (3) Social Security began to look shaky and (4) the rise of the Information Age Let’s examine these happenings in more detail.

1. From Spenders to Savers. Fueled in part by the stock market’s double-digit returns-approximately 22 percent in the 1990s-America, once a nation of savers, is being transformed into a nation of investors. In 1940, there were fewer than 80 funds and their assets totaled $50 million. Twenty years later, there were 160 funds and $17 billion in assets. As the twentieth century ended, asset expansion in the mutual fund industry during two calendar years was greater than the industry’s total size in 1990.

2. Fund Frenzy. Much of the expansion of the mutual fund industry has been fueled by the rapid growth of assets held in retirement-designated accounts. At the industry’s origins back in 1970, mutual funds held total assets of about $50 billion worldwide. Today, the biggest mutual fund alone-Fidelity Magellan-boasts assets of more than twice that amount, and the industry as a whole is swarming with 7,000 funds holding some $3 trillion in investor assets.

In addition, the mutual fund industry has benefited from employers’ shift away from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, like 401(k) plans. Defined benefit plans saddled employers with greater costs of administration, required current funding, higher future liabilities, and extensive administrative requirements. The result has been a move toward defined contribution plans, which provide employees with more control over their retirement plans by allowing them to choose where their retirement money is to be invested.

3. Social Security Woes. Analysts differ as to the exact date, but many agree that Social Security, as it is currently structured, will be exhausted sometime in the twenty-first century, just as the Baby Boomers are retiring in full force. Realizing that Social Security will not be the safety net it once was, Americans are taking financial matters into their own hands by participating in the growth of the capital markets.

The end result? A revolution in individual investing. After nearly two decades of relentless buying, more than half of all U.S. households own stocks either directly or through mutual funds. Those holdings are worth roughly $10 trillion, compared to about $5 billion in 1929, $940 billion in 1980, and $2.3 trillion in 1999, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Toss into the mix a big reduction in trading costs-discount brokerages like Charles Schwab have slashed such costs by as much as 80 percent in recent years-and you begin to see why individual investors’ interest in particular stocks and in Wall Street in general can be expected to spike even higher.

There’s little question that we are more sensitive to change today because of the speed with which we receive information. In 1805, word of British Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar did not reach North America until six weeks later. Now, any news, in any remote area, can be transmitted around the world in seconds.

The media and the speed with which investors are gathering investment information today are changing as well. Many people still subscribe to newsletters, brokerage reports, and The Wall Street Journal. But many more are replacing paper-based investment information sources with electronic ones-most notably, television and the World Wide Web. Circulation of The Wall Street Journal has fallen since 1995; CNBC’s viewers have tripled since 1995 in 2000. And millions of investors are also flocking to investment industry Web sites like CNBC.com and TheStreet.com.

Today’s financial junkies can gorge all day on financial news. Up-to-the-minute televised market coverage is carried live by CNBC, and online news services and chat rooms-the Motley Fool, TheStreet.com, Microsoft Investor, SmartMoney Interactive, and dozens of others-can be visited on the Web. Personal finance magazines such as Money, SmartMoney, Worth, Bloomberg Personal Finance, Mutual Funds, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Individual Investor, jam the newsstands and many offer their own online services.

Even general-interest business publications and, increasingly, mainstream media have embraced personal finance. TIME and Newsweek now offer regular investment and personal finance columns, and stock quotes are so commonplace they can be found on Playboy’s Web site.

The Web continues to change the face of investing. Investors turn to it to guide them through the uncertainties of a volatile stock market. Five years ago, a 2 percent one-day swing-in either direction-in the Standard & Poor’s 500 was rare. Today, whether they are reacting to a speech by a Federal Reserve official or a bump in the price of pork belly futures, investors tune into CNBC as soon as possible to see how the world markets are reacting.

To keep up with a stock market that seems to move with the speed of a supernova, many investors are turning to the real-time, software-based information tools that are available on the Internet. Just a few years ago, most investors had to go to a library and leaf through yellowed copies of The Wall Street Journal or The Economist to figure out whether it was a good time to buy or sell their stocks. Today, an astounding number of sources on the Internet give much better information and deliver it ten times faster.

The immediacy of electronic delivery channels meets the needs of today’s time-strapped investment consumers. Television and the Internet have helped fuel that trend by removing some of the mystery that had surrounded the stock market. Anyone with a remote control or a Web browser now has access to the kind of information that used to be available only to big firms. Not everyone may want to check basis-point disparities in Portuguese debentures at 1:00 A.M. in their pajamas, but you can if you want to.

Individual investors have made great strides in recent years but, for many nonprofessionals, the stock market remains an impenetrable maze of confusing numbers. Lawmakers, the Federal Reserve, market analysts, and professional economists seem to talk in a foreign language. Just what is a "J-curve"? What are "monetary aggregates," and why are fixed-income (bond) managers constantly stumbling over "yield curves"?

Some Wall Street veterans would rather keep all the good financial information to themselves. Access to analysts’ reports, fund managers’ commentary, road shows, and long lunch meetings are traditional birthrights to Wall Street pros. Their inside access to what’s really happening in the business world gives them a huge advantage over the rest of us. Key information allows them to pop out of dicey positions or pop into lucrative ones long before individual investors see any changes in the market.

Wall Street insiders also keep getting better access to lucrative deals. According to some investor advocates, Wall Street’s secret lists, known as "pot lists," confirm that the largest institutional investors are reaping the profits from hot initial public offerings (IPOs), leaving few opportunities for individual investors to participate. Companies like Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest mutual fund management firm, routinely receive double the allocation given to the next largest institutional investor, and more than the average mom-and-pop investment account.

This may sound unfair; the truth often does. In the hurly-burly financial markets, volume is king and timely information is its handmaiden. Holding the winning cards is what Wall Street is all about.

Wall Street has made many advancements during the past ten years but, given the opportunities and resources currently available, so have individual investors. Gaining the upper hand and creating wealth on Wall Street is a lot easier than you think.

This book shows you how.