Throwback: 1980s chaos on the NYSE floor

Have you ever heard of a teletypist? Did you know it once took 7 days for a stock sale to clear? Known as the "Einstein of Wall Street," the iconic Peter Tuchman has seen it all, having started on the New York Stock Exchange Floor in 1985, nearly 40 years ago. He sat down on Opening Bid with Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to dust-off old stories and shed light on a faded past.

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Transcripción del vídeo

There's a lot of next generation investors I know they follow you on Instagram.

I love your instagram Post, but that are listening to this podcast.

They're not familiar with the trading floor in the mid eighties to late eighties.

Bring that to life for us.

I ended up, uh, just to quickly, uh uh So they understand the the continuity there in in March of 1985 when all this was said and done, I got a summer job as a tele typist on the floor of the exchange.

There was no training for a job on the exchange, and back in those days, you have to start at the bottom.

Whether it was a squad, a teletype or a clerk, Teletype was back in the day when they were trading open outcry, auction markets and people would buy and sell stock.

That order would come from the post where you traded to the clerk.

The clerk would then report it upstairs.

And then that order was handed to a tele typist who was putting the information into an old school like clunky old computer who have, who bought who sold how many shares the price, the time kind of Blockchain in a way because it was the original ledger of the trades, because it's back.

Then it was T plus seven.

It it took seven days for the actual clearing to go on back then 1985 Wall Street.

New York Stock Exchange was wild and crazy.

There were thousands and thousands of people.

It was open outcry auction market.

Um, you know, there was the whole support staff that went on on the floor of the exchange brokers, market makers, squads, reporters, clerks.

I mean, the the the the the energy, the adrenaline for me.

The minute I walked onto the floor, I knew this was for me because I thrive on chaos.