All outside brokers, of course, are unchecked by the healthful
restraining control of the Stock Exchange Committee; they are
responsible to none but themselves. Their ranks unfortunately contain a
large number of rogues and vagabonds. As they deal direct with their
clients instead of for them, their clients' losses are their own gains;
often they do not deal at all, but only bet with their clients on the
rise or fall of prices. When they lose they refuse to pay, and on being
taken into Court plead the Gambling Acts to relieve them of their
liability. Cases are constantly occurring in which they show less
honesty even than this; they simply make off with any money with which
people may have entrusted them. As a rule, the advertising outside
broker is to be avoided.
CHAPTER VI
HOW BUSINESS IS TRANSACTED
When the broker, armed with his client's order, goes to the market in
which it can be executed, and confronts the jobber with whom he usually
deals because he finds he does his business best, he asks the jobber to
make him a price in the stock concerned. He does not say he wants to buy
it, for that would tempt the jobber to make the price high; he does not
say he wants to sell it, for that would tempt him to make it low. The
jobber would not, of course, give an out-of-the-way quotation, for the
broker knows the market price almost as well as he does, but he might be
tempted to vary the price by a fraction. As it is, the jobber names two
prices, one at which he will sell and one at which he will buy. Suppose
it were the Deferred Stock of the Midland Railway Company, the jobber
might quote 69-70, meaning that he would buy the stock at 69 or sell it
at 70. The broker would probably think that this price was too wide and
might say so, implying that the jobber ought to be prepared to buy at a
higher price and sell at a lower one. There are jobbers standing near
who would like the business and who would make a narrower price. At
last, without much haggling, for there is little of that in the Stock
Exchange, the quotation 69-3/8-69-5/8 may be obtained. The broker need
not have to ask for the price at all, the jobbers may be shouting that
they are willing to buy or sell at a certain price, or that they are
willing to deal either way. At all events, the broker being content with
the quotation 69-3/8-69-5/8, and being commissioned to buy, informs the
jobber that he buys so much stock from him at 69-5/8.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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