NY Stock exchange back in the 80s, with a bunch of people screaming and throwing paper. How did the trades get carried out? It seemed like absolute chaos.
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Overly simplified of course, but the gist is that customer calls a broker to initiate a certain trade (buy 500 shares of X, at price Y). Broker calls down to the “pit” (where trades take place on the exchange floor), lets the floor man know what trade(s) to make. Floor man goes over to the pit, initiates hand signals to identify to the pit that he wants to buy, looks for the accompanying hand signals for people looking to sell. Eye contact. More hand signals exchanged, deal is agreed to. Both buyer and seller write down their notes as to what the trade details were, then both go back to their phones, call their bosses and report the trade. Reconcile at the end of the day and if everything matches, all good, move on to the next day.
Look for old videos by Louis Rukeyser . He explained all these hand signs in the 80s on “Wall Street Week” on PBS.
Entertaining, if a tiny bit racist.
“Floored” a documentary on the Chicago Commodities Exchange does a great job explaining how it works. It was one of the last US exchanges to go digital. It’s available on YouTube.
This is actually a really good documentary about open outcry trading pits.
A big thing is they mostly weren’t yelling and acting crazy. Normal days they were calmly telling the guy and it’s just a day something wild was happening that anyone bothered to record. Like if you were trying to understand how shopping worked but only watched videos of Black Friday crowd rushes.
In addition to all the fine documentaries that others are recommending, may I recommend the finest documentary about Wall Street of all time, *Trading Places*.
I kid, but it actually does a pretty good job of showing how it works. Insider trading too.
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Reminds me of movies where there is the bookie taking bets in the stands and it looks impossible to keep track of.
Did you see the Robert Downey Jnr video, too?
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