220 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
the speed and efficiency with which his work is handled; on the
other hand, they are not necessarily a panacea for all the prob-
lems of his business, especially in active markets, and they have
considerably increased the number of persons on the congested
Stock Exchange floor.*®
Specialist’s Book.—Orders limited at prices considerably
above or below the current market price are, as already stated,
usually kept by the specialist’s clerk in a loose-leaf notebook.
But market orders, and also orders limited at prices reasonably
close to the market, are handled by the specialist himself.
Most specialists keep a record of such limited orders close
to the market in a pocket notebook, usually about 8 inches long
and 3% inches wide. Since this specialist’s book is merely a
personal memorandum book, its exact character and the precise
way in which entries are made in it depend mainly on the par-
ticular wishes of its owner. Practice in this regard is, how-
ever, sufficiently similar to permit the description of a typical
specialist’s book in the ensuing pages.
At the top in the middle of the page is inscribed a round
figure close to the market price of the given stock issue. In
the illustration (see Figure 14) this is 95. All the specialist’s
orders limited at that price are written in below it, buy orders
on one side and sell orders on the other. At appropriate dis-
tances down the middle, directly beneath the “gg” are increas-
ingly higher fractions by I%s up; here orders limited at these
fractions are similarly inscribed. The range of prices on a
page depends upon the number of orders to be entered beside
them, which in turn depends upon the relative activity or inac-
tivity of the stock in question. The way in which an order is
usually entered in the specialist’s book also requires explana-
tion. First, the number of shares involved is recorded in terms
of hundreds (i.e., 1=100, 2=200, etc.) ; next is inscribed the
name of the firm or individual who has given the order to the
specialist, and after this name the period during which the
18 See Appendix VIIIh.
