A TYPICAL INVESTMENT TRANSACTION 169 
printed on the tape in lower New York. Two separate ticker 
systems are maintained—one for bonds and one for stocks. 
With the former, there is only one sending instrument. But 
owing to the greater activity in shares, there are several such 
instruments for them. An ingenious electrical device coordi- 
nates the flow of their several electrical impulses into the print. 
ing of the single stock tape. 
The ticker machines operated from the floor in this way are 
hose of the New York Quotation Company, and their distribu- 
tion is confined to Manhattan Island below Chambers Street. 
But from one of these tickers in the office of the Western 
Union Telegraph Co. in this district, an operator of the latter 
company reads the quotations as they appear, and transmits 
them to its tickers located all over the nation 18 
Reading the Stock Ticker.—Ever since 1920, successive 
changes in the ticker quotation system have been effected in 
an endeavor to avoid delays in reporting the increasing volume 
of transactions. 
Every listed stock issue is known on the tape by a certain 
letter or letters. U. S. Steel common, for example, is “X”; 
Pennsylvania Railroad stock is “PA,” etc. These abbrevia- 
tions give rise to much Wall Street “slang.” Southern Pacific 
common (now “SX” but formerly “SP”) used to be called 
“Soup” for short; Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway common 
(“KT”) is called “Katy,” etc. 
After the symbol for the stock is printed, there next appears 
the amount of it which has been sold. The sales-unit on the 
Exchange being 100 for shares, a sale of this amount is under- 
stood without being specially indicated, while a sale of 200 
shares appears as “2.”—of 300 shares “3.,”” etc. Finally the 
price itself appears. Until the heavy markets of 1928, prices 
were reported in full. But in that year, to further economize 
time, only the last digit (plus fractions) of the price was 
printed, it being presupposed that the reader of the tape would 
"1s Appendix VId.