USE OF INFORMATION ON THE EXCHANGES 1. Value of news.—Wall Street is the world's big gest cash market for news. The quickest and most ac curate news is absolutely essential to this vast money whirlpool where men speculate in stocks, grain, cot ton and other commodities. Even the uninitiated have some idea how exceedingly delicate and flexible are the great markets and how easily the trend of prices changes in either direction as unfavorable or propitious news becomes known. Thus it is the busi ness of the speculative operator to learn as quickly as possible what is going on in the world. If time is money, so is news.
Thus it comes about that Wall Street is as hungry for news as a famished wolf for a woolly victim. To anyone visiting the financial district this eagerness dis plays itself immediately. "What do you know?" is the common greeting, and the question does not refer to health or individual affairs but to national and in ternational intercourse.
As the writer stated in the Saturday Evening Post of December 25, 1915: In that central ganglion of the financial nerves of two hemispheres, Wall Street, an obscure man may let loose a paragraph powerful enough to create or demolish fortunes, initiate whole new cycles of national development, and re verberate for decades thru the halls of Congress and state legislatures.
It is a royal battle of wits, this unearthing of big financial news. Once the secrets of high finance reach the light, whether willingly or otherwise, there is no gauge to their mo mentum. They may roll and thunder on with consequences and after effects that no wizard can foresee.
Less than a year ago it was said that big news, inside news, "beats," as the newspaper reporters say, were no longer obtainable in Wall Street; that not until another J. P. Morgan or E. H. Harriman appeared upon the scene, and another era of great mergers got under way, would financial news again become supreme. Also it was said that speculation had died peacefully of old age. Both assertions were wrong. Never was there more big news than now ; never was inside news of high financial import more eagerly sought after.
Today the air is filled with rumors of mergers and new exploitations. With several billion dollars of war orders,
the very spirit of 1901 lives again, and the machinery for blazing forth to a money-crazed public every step in the new era of industrial promotion is more complete than ever be fore.
What are the sources of information upon which the speculator relies? They are by no means haphazard or occasional, but on the contrary, are as accurate and regular as the ingenuity and intelligence of man can make them.
2. The ticker.—The most important single agency engaged in the spreading of news in and about the exchanges is the ticker. It is a marvelous electrical typewriter worked from the headquarters of the com panies that rent the tickers to subscribers. It prints a narrow strip or ribbon of paper known colloquially as the "tape." The tape is not confined to the Stock Exchange nor to the Wall Street district. It is used both by members of the Exchange and by outsiders. The New York Produce Exchange, the Chicago Board of Trade, the New York Coffee Exchange and the New York Cotton Exchange each have tickers of their own, giving the actual prices or "quotations" made in these exchanges and distributed thru the coun try. Each system is operated by separate companies but all are conducted on a similar plan and with a common purpose. There are twenty cities outside New York that have their own ticker services. About a century ago doves were used in England to carry news and reports, but their usefulness ceased with the development of the cable, telegraph, telephone and, finally, the ticker for price movements.
The ticker seen in banks, in brokers' offices, in hotel lobbies is a machine about four feet high, resembling somewhat in shape and size a subway or theatre ticket receiver. Within is a spool of narrow paper ribbon which feeds itself into the printer, and upon which the machine operates like a visible typewriter. After the printing by telegraphic conveyance of the first quotation the spool slowly revolves to .make room for the printing of the next quotation. Near the ticker is placed a basket into which the ribbon gradually falls as the price quotations continue to come in.