It’s one minute before trading begins on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and the sound of capitalism is clearly audible, rising electrically to the visitors’ gallery.
The clocks around the huge trading floor begin to flash as the countdown begins. At 9:30 a.m., a bell rings and trading begins. A seemingly confused gaggle of 2,000 or more men and women run around like ants whose nest has been kicked over.
But this is no anthill. Billions of dollars change hands here each day as the world’s most visible symbol of a market economy conducts its business.
I’ve been to the NYSE a dozen times over the years as business and family have taken me to this city. I always try to stop at the exchange and stand in the visitors’ gallery, watching and listening to the world of business unfolding below.
It’s kind of a touchstone for me, a place I can go to feel the power and drama of the business world. It’s a place to watch the mergers and acquisitions, the profits and losses, the rising stars and the fading has-beens.
On this day, the market opens quietly, rising only a few points at the beginning of trading-at a plateau after recent gains. News stories will record it as a quiet day on Wall Street.
At one trading post-they still use the old terminology-a group begins to gather. A guide says it’s where IBM is traded. We can’t hear the traders’ animated conversation above the overall roar, but serious trading is taking place.
The specialist, the person who keeps the market orderly by facilitating buying and selling, establishes a price for the stock. Orders are written, clerks scurry away, computers flash.
Wall Street. Newscasters use the term as a catch-all for the financial world-a kind of drab, cavernous 12-square-block collection of buildings at the lower end of Manhattan Island. There really is a Wall Street, of course. The NYSE is at No. 11. Twenty-four brokers met under a buttonwood tree at the corner of Wall and William Streets in 1792 to found the forerunner of the NYSE. The current building dates from 1903.
The American Stock Exchange is at 86 Trinity Place (212-306-1000), a few blocks away. Several large brokerage companies have offices around the corner on Pine. The people who run the over-the-counter market (usually stocks of smaller companies) are actually in the two huge World Trade Center towers, half a dozen blocks away (the World Trade Center observation deck in the south tower, 2 World Trade Center, is open 9:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily; call 212-435-7377).
The “Street” is more a collection of buildings and people than a single place-a critical mass of busy trading floors, electronic market gurus, brokers and clerks who together form the financial heart of the United States.
Touring, then, involves more than finding the street and walking along it. Especially at noon on a nice day, you’ll be swept up in the flood of thousands of people the industry employs as they pour out of their skyscrapers, all but stopping traffic in the neighborhood.
The NYSE offers a view of the trading to the public through its visitors’ center (open 9:15 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday; closed major holidays; 212-656-5167 or 212-656-5168). The exchange distributes free admission tickets (no guided tours) beginning at 9 each morning at 20 Broad St., around the corner from the main entrance. An average day sees about 2,000 visitors-more in summer, when it’s a good idea to arrive early to pick up passes.
Take an elevator up to the visitors’ center with its interactive machines for looking up stocks, as well as displays, a slide show, and a presentation on how to read “the ticker,” that mad jumble of numbers and letters that reflects what the market is doing at any given moment. From the visitors’ gallery, a balcony above the floor of the exchange, feel the pulse of the marketplace.
The Amex is similar to the NYSE in that it uses what are called specialists to keep trading going, but it’s a smaller exchange without a tour or visitors’ center-at least for now. The Amex has similar rules to the NYSE, but it always has been a small stepsister to the Big Board.
The newest member of the financial world, the over-the-counter market, started informally in the 1930s as brokers bought and sold smaller companies’ stocks literally over the counter. Today it’s an electronic market that rivals-and at times surpasses-the NYSE in size, with a computer-based “national market system” called NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation system). The computerized trading system is relatively young, having started in the early 1970s. It’s a “floorless” system, in that trading occurs around the nation by “market makers.” The association is headquartered in Washington, D.C.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 33 Liberty St. (212-720-6130), is where the government buys and sells its notes and bonds.
Eighty feet below the street at the Federal Reserve is its gold vault. About half the length of a football field, it holds the gold reserves of 80 foreign nations: about 351 million troy ounces with a market value in the billions-thought to be the largest accumulation of gold in the world.
There’s also a lot of non-financial history around Wall Street.
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Just across the street from the NYSE is Federal Hall National Memorial, 26 Wall St. (212-264-8700), site of the first capitol of the United States. George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony overlooking the street on April 30, 1789. There’s a big statue of Washington in front, although New York pigeons seem to be its principal admirers.
Walk back up the street to Broadway and you’ll run into the small, Gothic-style Trinity Church, 89 Broadway (212-602-0872), with its cemetery off to the side. The parcel of land is worth millions, and is the resting place of a number of famous New Yorkers. Robert Fulton, inventor of the steamboat, is buried there along with Alexander Hamilton, an early Secretary of the Treasury. It’s a good place to hang out and watch the crowds.
There was actually a wall at Wall Street once. In 1653, the Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant ordered a wall built from the Hudson River to the East River, ostensibly for protection against attacks by local tribes. It was more symbolic than anything, since residents kept taking the planks to shore up their houses and heat their homes.
The corner of Wall and Broad Streets was the site of the first City Hall for New York. Business took over in the 1840s. The NYSE actually started in a tavern on Water Street, the Tontine Coffee House.
Stock exchanges are springing up around the world. But there is something special about Wall Street.
MUSEUM GIVES HISTORY LESSON
The 5-year-old, living-room-size Museum of American Financial History moved a year ago to permanent quarters on the ground floor of the Herzog Heine Geduld Inc. brokerage in the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, at 24 Broadway, about a block from Wall Street. The museum hopes to expand its current hours, 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Until then, however, special arrangements can be made to open the museum for groups by calling 212-908-4519.
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For additional information about the Financial District, call the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau at 212-397-8222.