The work of the Stock Exchange

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1831284952

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-225876

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Meeker, James Edward http://d-nb.info/gnd/126597340

Title:: The work of the Stock Exchange

Edition:: Revised edition

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Ronald Press Company

Year of publication:: [1930]

Scope:: XVI, 720 Seiten; Illustrationen, Diagramme

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

508 APPENDIX the stock tape which continualy ran behind these enormous markets. At length, American inventive genius came to the rescue of the Stock Exchange by producing an entirely new stock ticker machine, capable of printing goo characters a minute and of handling 7,000,000 share days. But this machine could not be immediately utilized; not only were elaborate tests on a time basis necessary, but the task of installing them all over the country was also great. Furthermore, the new machines could not be operated up to their full capacity until every old machine in the country had been replaced. In the interim, the attempt was made to speed up the ticker ser- vice by using fewer characters to print the same information. Some time before, the ticker symbols for the various listed share issues had been carefully revised, not only to cut symbols of three letters down to two, and those of two dowh to one, but also to make the one letter symbols as far as possible coincide with the most active stocks. The actual printing of symbols was performed in the old ticker machine by a little wheel, electrically operated, with the various letters on its circumference. To save time taken up by rotation of this wheel from one letter to another, the ticker symbols were also reorganized so as to make the letters of a given symbol come as close together as possible on this wheel. As of Sept. 25, 1929, there were 9,707 stock tickers and 1,068 bond tickers in operation by the New York Quotation Co., the Western Union Telegraph Co., and (in Boston) the United Telegram Co. They were located in 346 cities in 41 states of the Union and in the Dominion of Canada. Of this total, 5,728 were located in New York State. Automatic ticker quotations were first completely dispatched to the Pacific Coast in March, 1926. Subsequently, the service was ex- tended to such other distant centers as Dallas, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; Denver, Colo- rado; Salt Lake City, Utah; Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles and San Diego, California; and Vancouver, British Columbia. When in 1928 the old stock ticker still was unable to keep up with the market, even more drastic steps were taken to economize characters on the tape. In price quotations, all but the last digit plus any frac- tion was omitted; thus 300 Steel common sold at 14738 which for- merly had been printed on the tape “X3.14734” now became “3.733.” Subsequently, the rule was made that when the tape is five or more minutes behind the market, no volume of sales under 5,000 shares should be reported until the tape has again caught up to the market. Since the bond tape did not become similarly congested, inactive

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