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It's High Tech, Low Spirits at Exchange Independent stockbroker Randy Beller still dons the bright turquoise trading jacket that once made him easy to spot among the furor of trading on the New York Stock Exchange floor. But as he roams that floor these days, mostly it is just his friends who notice him. “Randy Beller! Hero of the people!” someone yelled the other day. “Hey Raaaaaandy!” cried another. The trading jackets, the locker room-style camaraderie, these have not changed since Beller started at the Exchange 26 years ago. Pretty much everything else has. Gone is the raucous, paper-strewn, adrenaline-driven auction market that Beller once knew. Today, the mood on the floor of the Stock Exchange is quiet, the trading subdued. Beller points to a man reading a newspaper, and another idly leaning with one elbow on a counter, staring into space. Nearby is an empty broker’s booth, wires still visible where phone banks have been removed. Brokers, clerks, and specialists—many who have worked 25 years or more at the exchange—are leaving in droves. “It’s like a hospice here,” said Beller, shaking his head. “I’m heartbroken.” A NYSE spokeswoman said the exchange does not keep track of individual firms’ hirings and firings on the floor, and so cannot say how many people still work there. But several brokers who have been on the floor for decades estimate that the floor population is down by some 40 percent, and dwindling fast. “We’re saying good-bye to people every day,” said one broker with 25 years on the floor of the exchange. Like many others interviewed for this story, he chose to remain anonymous for fear of trouble with the exchange or his employer. “I don’t think you can look three months ahead and feel secure.” “What I’m doing here is extending the inevitable,” said a clerk with 36 years on the floor. “Maybe I’ll be here three months, maybe a year.” Beller, for one, said he’s trading a third of the shares he was just six months ago. “I’m barely making it right now,” he said. “It’s dropping like a rock.” More than one local exchange is reeling from the rapid switch to electronic trading. “We’ve really had to shrink the size of our operation,” says Robert Pelligrino, who owns a business on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in Battery Park City. NYMEX incorporated electronic trading into the daily business of the exchange about a year ago. While overall trading volume has increased, fewer trades are coming through the floor brokers. The result has been that, like at the NYSE, the population on the floor is dropping fast. Pelligrino’s company has dwindled to a quarter of its original size. “I had brokers with me for 10 years that I had to let go,” he says. “It’s the end of an era.” At NYMEX and the NYSE alike, brokers say that it is not only jobs that are being lost. While customers save on fees by going electronic, some say that without the broker’s flexibility and ability to strategize, customers aren’t always getting the best price. “The expertise is gone. Now it’s all about speed, speed, speed,” said Mark Slugh, a former independent broker who left the NYSE in December after 23 years. “What we loved about what we did was the finesse,” added his wife, Danielle Russo-Slugh, a former clerk at the NYSE. “The service. When you did it and you did it right, it was like trading with your own money.” Competition from all-electronic markets has meant the Stock Exchange itself has become increasingly computerized, even lifeless. Not so very long ago, a typical trade was a rapid-fire, heart-pounding relay race. Runners would zigzag from broker to clerk and back again, bearing scribbled orders. Brokers would jostle for trades on the raucous floor, gathering at specialists’ posts and yelling out their bids. These days a typical trade is a solitary affair. Runners are no more, and brokers communicate with customers via a quiet tap, tap, tap on the handheld device that hangs around their necks. Clerks are nearly obsolete. “The human element is gone,” said Beller. “Look at everybody, walking with their heads down. People have nothing to do.” Though not everyone is as outspoken as Beller, there is a pervasive sense of loss on the floor. A Trib reporter spoke with nearly a dozen NYSE brokers, clerks, and specialists. Almost all worried about their job security and spoke of being saddened at the loss of “the human touch.” Before NYSE officials made them take it down, Beller and several other independent brokers had a sign hanging on their booth. “Exhibit: Extinct New York Stock Exchange Brokers,” it said. “Please Feed Us Junk Food and Beer.” On a recent afternoon, a group of these brokers gathered in one of the booths that ring the floor. A few years ago they would hardly have had the time to sit down for lunch. On this day they leaned on the counter, one sitting in a folding chair. Some of them casually tapped on their handhelds, trading while they talked. The conversation revolved around how many people would be leaving at the end of the month, those who’d already gone, and their own job prospects. “They took away all of our business, they raised our fees, we make no money, and yet we come to work!” said one, and the others laughed. (Like many exchanges, the NYSE recently went public, in 2004. Some people on the floor blame that move for the accelerating job loss.) “Maybe we’re waiting for a sign from God about whether we should stay or not,” said another, who said he would become a life coach if forced to leave. Most of those who have already left have had to reinvent themselves. Few are college-educated, and their skills do not easily translate into other careers. One former broker has opened a bed and breakfast, another, a restaurant. Some have become doormen. “We used to be the tail that wagged the dog,” said Beller. “Now we’re like the flea on the tail.” Mark Slugh and Danielle Russo-Slugh both work from their Battery Park City home now. She sells cosmetics and he works as a day trader, investing their own money. They are making a living, but Slugh says he misses the camaraderie, the noise, the action of the floor. “It’s a lonely, quiet feeling,” he said. At least one company is capitalizing on such trading floor nostalgia. With the advent of electronic markets, came ‘MarketSound,’ ‘The Virtual Pit’ and ‘The Crowd.’ These computer software programs for former financial traders aim to bring the sound of the old floor into the office. “Buy em!” the canned voices say. “Sell!” they say. The sound gets louder as the market heats up.
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