Just why this customer yearns for news from the floor has always been a mystery to me. What does he expect to learn? What value attaches to a list of names of brokers who buy or sell Steel, when everybody knows that really important principals in these matters invariably hide their hands? All the significant news of the day is printed on the news tickers and reaches the customer’s eye before the broker or the floor knows anything about it, yet never an hour passes but he is importuned to “say something” about what is happening on ’Change, although half the time nothing whatever is happening. The climax of this sort of thing is reached when the floor man is asked to predict the future course of the market, a request that reaches him a dozen times a day. Now, in the name of common sense, what does he know about whether the market is going up or down? How can a man who is swimming with the current tell how fast he is going? If he were a seer who could foretell such things he would have all the money in Wall Street, in which case he wouldn’t remain a broker very long. Just watch him; he is as busy as a man can be; his hands are full of orders, his head is occupied with many anxieties, his eye is on the indicator board, or scanning the room; arms and legs are working as fast as nature will permit; he must concentrate at all times. His ears ring with the strife of the room; all sorts of rumors, many of them ridiculous, are hastily whispered to him; “boos” and groans from the bears, shrieks and yells from the bulls--this is the sort of thing he hears all the day long. How can he form an opinion when thus distracted? He stands too close to the picture; he lacks perspective. What such a man thinks of the market isn’t worth anything; indeed, he does not “think” at all except about executing his orders, and heaven knows that is enough to engross him. Answering all the questions that come to him over the wires is the hardest task, and the most distasteful thing the floor man is called on to do. He knows that he doesn’t know anything; from his point of view no information is better than misinformation. He feels with Josh Billings, “It’s a mitey site better not 2 no so mutch than 2 no so mutch that ain’t so,” but nevertheless he must continue to express views and theories and opinions and predictions, whether he likes it or not. Some of his oracular utterances are illuminating. “Market is going down,” he replies, “because there are more sellers than buyers.” Inexorable logic.