RISE OF THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE 83
The Odd-Lot Dealer and the Floor Trader.—As for the
dealers, the odd-lot dealer buys and sells less than the trading
unit of 100 shares of stock. So complex is his work that con-
sideration of it must be deferred to a later chapter.?? Then
there is the floor trader,” who is a free-lance dealer in all stocks
listed on the Exchange, and who will buy or sell any of them
on his own account whenever he sees the likelihood of a profit
in the transaction. The floor trader performs a function very
useful in the work of the Exchange, by constantly helping to
create close prices for stocks and thus enhance their negoti-
ability. Both the odd-lot dealer and the floor trader act for
themselves rather than as agents for other principals, and their
earnings depend in consequence upon obtaining a profitable dif-
ference between the buying and selling prices of their transac-
tions rather than upon any commission such as the brokers
obtain
The Specialist.—I ast and most difficult of all to define,
is the specialist.** Usually the specialist, as indeed his name
would imply, specializes as a dealer or broker in a particular
security or securities located at a single post. He is not allowed
to act as both dealer and broker in any single transaction, and
he cannot charge a commission while he profits by the sale of a
security at a higher price than that at which it was purchased.
Commission brokers often turn over their orders to the
specialist to execute, as a broker and their agent, on the same
basis as with the “two-dollar” broker. Some specialists act as
dealers in 100-share orders, and occasionally in odd-lot orders
as well. In the former case their work resembles that of a floor
trader, except that it is concentrated on one stock or group of
stocks ; in the latter case, of odd-lot orders, they do in their
few special stocks what the odd-lot house does in all stocks.
In addition to the above brokers, dealers, and traders in
2 See Chapter IX.
B® See Chapter VIII.
M bid.
% See Chapter VIII.
