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.

APPENDIX 613 appointed by Governor Hughes of New York, is to afford a continu- ous open market for the transactions and thus to diminish the fluctu- ations of price. Any attempt to restrict legitimate trading is bound to interfere with this steadying influence. Thus the famous prohibi- tion of speculation in gold during the Civil War in the United States resulted in immensely increased oscillations of price which continued until the hasty repeal of the law; and the recent German legislation against futures in the wheat market produced an effect the contrary of what was anticipated, leading, after the lapse of a decade, to an alteration in the law. A tax on produce-exchange transactions would tend to have the same kind of effect as an absolute prohibition although its efficacy would obviously be far less. In other words, a tax would tend to diminish the number of transactions or to restrict the market. To this extent it would lead to an increase in oscillations of price. But the tax, although paid by the broker, would be charged to the principal, whether seller or purchaser, and would not be borne by this principal; for as long as he continued to speculate, the gains on the larger margins of the fewer transactions would presumably equal the fewer gains on the smaller margins of the more frequent transactions. The real burden would be borne not by the speculators but by the producers or the consumers of the commodity traded in on the produce exchange. For the advantages of the relative stability of price due to produce speculation inure, as is well recognized, either to the pro- ducer or to the consumer, or to both. The price on produce-exchange rransactions tends, therefore, to engender consequences which are not usually expected. Where, indeed, as is commonly the case, the ax is relatively slight, these consequences are almost imperceptible. But at all events the tax must not be regarded as one on speculators profits. “In the case of stock-exchange taxes, the situation is still more -omplicated by the fact that we are not dealing so directly with pro- jucers and consumers of a taxable commodity. The tax is imposed on the transfer of securities, not of ordinarily consumable commod- ities. Here again it may be stated that the tax is not, as usually imagined, borne either by the brokers or by their immediate principles who are trading on margins. For here, as on the produce exchanges, any hindrance to the free speculative movement tends to increase the Auctuation of prices, and with this widening of the upper and lower limits of stock quotations even the so-called traders or room brokers in New York, who virtually speculate on their own account, will tend, notwithstanding the diminution in transactions, to make as high profits

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