THE BOND MARKET
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in the stock market, bond brokers execute orders on commission
for other principals, while bond dealers buy and sell for
themselves. Thus, as in shares, negotiability is through “the
bond crowd” imparted to listed issues. The members of “the
bond crowd,” however, are not as completely specialized as are
Exchange members usually dealing in the share market, owing
to the lesser volume of bond than share dealings. Thus, most
of the bond dealers are also brokers, and vice versa, although
they are prohibited to act in both capacities in the same transaction
here as in shares. Stockbrokers are sometimes unfamiliar
with the technical features of bond dealings and in order
to obtain the best obtainable prices for their customers, often
“give out” their orders for bonds to bond brokers and share
the commission with them, much as they “give out” orders in
stocks which they cannot themselves handle adequately to the
specialists and “two-dollar” brokers of the share market. For
this reason, however, the ordinary Stock Exchange firm can
buy or sell bonds for a customer with the same ease as
shares, even though its floor member may himself be relatively
unfamiliar with the technique of the bond market on the Exchange.
There is no highly organized odd-lot machinery in
the bond market, since the $1,000 unit in a sense makes the
whole market a retail one, and since in any case orders for
$500 and $100 bond denominations are relatively infrequent.
Execution of Bond Orders.—Stock Exchange firms spedializing
in the bond business sometimes have a separate telephone
booth or booths in each of the three sections into which
the bond trading room is divided. When an order to buy or to
sell an active bond comes in-at the telephone, the telephone
clerk makes out a slip for it as in the share market, and gives
it to the Exchange member, who enters the active bond market
(or the active part of the foreign market) to negotiate the
purchase or sale. Usually he will first inquire the current bid
and offer prices from the quotation clerk, although if the
“crowd” is dealing actively in the issue he may proceed into it
