The Stock Exchange from WithinVan Antwerp, William C. (William Clarkson)
History
The Stock Exchange from Within
Van Antwerp, William C. (William Clarkson)
New York Stock Exchange; Stock exchanges
Such a system, it would seem, is all very well for the jobber, but
quite unfair to the outsider and to the conscientious broker who is
striving all the while to protect the interests of the public and
maintain the welfare of the Exchange. Indeed, as it works out in
London, the broker has all the worst of it in many ways. Even though
the jobber “runs a book,” as the phrase is, his work is done at 4
P.M.--when the market closes--and if he is not doing a large business
he may then follow his inclinations. Unless his business involves
dealing in South Africans or Americans, his work is substantially
completed with the official closing of the Exchange. But the broker, on
the other hand, enjoys no such freedom. After the closing he must go
to his office--for in the nature of things he must have one--and there
he will find correspondence awaiting him, orders to be executed in the
“Street markets,” and telephone messages to send to his customers.
The mere fact that a London broker must use the London telephone is
in itself a curse, for nowhere under the canopy is there a telephone
service so dreadful and so exasperating.
Even in the ebb-tide of a dwindling summer business the London broker,
who cannot begin his day’s correspondence until four, finds it
difficult to leave his office until an hour long after his American
colleague has played his eighteen holes or dressed for dinner. Aside
from the horrors of the telephone service, this is due in a measure
to the fact that they have no ticker in London and the mechanical
efficiency with which this machine faithfully records all over America
each fluctuation of the market, finds no counterpart in England. The
broker in London has therefore to perform, in a measure, the work of
the ticker in New York. Perhaps I should not say they have no tickers
in London. In point of fact there is such an instrument, identical with
our own, which four or five times a day, at stated intervals, reels
off with mechanical monotony a list of quotations in certain active
securities--the same group every day. They are limited in number,
almost nobody looks at them, and many really enterprising houses do not
install them at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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