600

APPENDIX

limit for delivery of securities on Exchange transactions made the
previous full business day.
The ticker is also used as a speedy “lost-and-found” column for
the financial district, by printing notices that certain bond or stock
certificates have been lost or mislaid. This immediately endangers
any attempt by a thief to negotiate stolen securities, by communicating
the given certificate numbers to everyone. Sometimes, too, an Exchange
 broker may fail in the press of active business to catch the
name of the buyer; in this case, when the ticker prints “JouN SMITH
SoLp 200 STEEL CoMMON AT 140: No Name” the buyer will see it,
communicate with the seller, and avoid future difficulty.
After the day’s quotations, the ticker prints the final bids and offers
at the close thus giving the very latest indication as to price conditions
in the market that day. High and low prices for the day are then run
off on the tape, and finally “settlement prices” from the Stock Clearing
 Corporation for use of Exchange members in preparing for the
clearance and settlement of that day’s business on the Exchange.
(VIe) “It has long been known that investors and speculators in
America enjoy vastly more safety in their market operations through
these various avenues of publicity than do investors and speculators
abroad. There are no tickers worthy of the name across the water,
and the daily list of business done, as published in our newspapers,
with bid and asked prices and total transactions in detail, is unheard
of among all the Bourses in Europe. The eminent French economist,
Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, speaks very earnestly of the superiority of our
New York Stock Exchange system in this matter. He says the need
for a similar method in France is ‘very urgent,’ that the information
thus spread broadcast is ‘very instructive,’ that the pledge of publicity
is ‘better assured in the United States than in any other country of the
world,” and that an immediate reform along these lines is ‘absolutely
necessary’ in Paris in the interest of the public.” (Van Antwerp, p.
163.)

(VIf) Particularly with inactive issues but also frequently with
active ones, a brokerage customer will wish to ascertain, before giving
his brokerage firm a buying or selling order, not only the last saleprice
 of the given security on the ticker tape, but in addition the current
 bid and offer prices for it on the Exchange floor. He may
therefore request his broker to get him a quotation for it.
Formerly, the brokerage firm, in complying with such requests,
would telephone to its floor member on the Exchange, who would have
to obtain the request at his floor phone, go to the proper post and get
the bid and offer quotations, and return to his floor phone whence they