WALL STREET: 23,000 Shares!

One day last week a telephone in the office of a Wall Street customers man trilled. Grabbing the receiver, the customers man found an old friend anxious to chat. “Get off the wire,” bridled the broker, “you’re interrupting my chess game!”

Most Wall Streeters last week might just as well have turned to chess. For months the New York Stock Exchange has starved for business. Even when it had business, the market was on occasions too weak to handle it.

Last week Union Securities Corp. had 23,000 shares of Kennecott Copper common to dispose of. Like many a trader, Union Securities decided that its best chance was to sell them privately, outside the market.

Next day Union Securities, following the rules of the Exchange, asked permission of the Exchange’s Committee on Member Firms to sell the Kennecott at |of a point under the last sale after the close of business that day. The committee passed the request along to the Committee on Floor Procedure. There it ran into Chairman Robert Stott, who was vexed at seeing so much rightful Exchange business done off the floor. He did some fast telephoning. Back to Union Securities went word that the Exchange could & would handle the sale.

Over the ticker just after 12:45 p.m. went the news that 1,500 shares of Kennecott had been sold at 25—⅛ under the last sale. Next sale was 200 shares at 24⅞; then 400 at 24⅜. Could the market take it? It could. On the fourth try 20,000 shares of Kennecott went down the chute at 24⅝—up ¼ from the low, only ½ under the high.

For Union Securities the operation was most satisfactory. To distribute the stock off the market would have cost $23,000-$34,500 (1—1½ points a share). Cost of marketing the stock through the Exchange was $3,450 ($15 per hundred shares). But for the once haughty Stock Exchange, the transaction was fantastic. It had actually grubbed for a piece of business that even in 1932 it could have put in its eye.