Sunday, July 21, 2019

The Skinny On Trading Rooms

By Catherine Hamilton


For those who have watched some Wall Street movies, they will probably be familiar with a room where a lot of people are shouting at each other, talking on the phone, and running around. This is known as a trading room or a dealing room where all the deals happen. For those who are into Wall Street, here are a few things to know about these trading rooms.

Now, first thing to know is that these places are also known as dealing rooms because that is where they transact deals. These areas became popular sometime in the seventies wherein a lot of investment types came out such as bonds, stocks, foreign exchange, and funding. Because most of these investment types were scattered to various departments, banks decided it was easier to put them all together in a designated dealing room.

Now, when the dealing room started out, only a phone and a teleprinter was found there as that was the only tools a broker used. The teleprinter gave the price quotes as well as printed them out on a special piece of paper. The teleprinter would print out the highs, lows, and last price of the investment.

Sometime during the mid 1900s, things became more advanced with a tele register which helped brokers read the securities on the New York Stock Exchange. Eventually, phones started filling up the areas because traders had to speak with various brokers to make trades from various brokers at the same time. At the same time, he or she also had a calculator to make computations.

Eventually, the eighties saw a more advanced technology come into the picture known as spreadsheets. This eventually came out along with the Windows OS. Microsoft Excel became the popular choice for traders because it had special formulas to make computations and an organized structure.

Eventually, the digital revolution came in and video displays eventually filled the computers of traders. Of course, this lead to the classic room where people shout the price quotes slowly changing to simple, quiet computers where trades could be made digitally. Also, information could also be found through the internet to make trades more precise.

These days, computers completely fill the dealing floors with the software that can be used for technical analysis. Before the software was introduced, fundamental analysis was more widely used because the entry of trades could not be calculated real time at that moment. However, real time graphs with indicators changed all that and allowed trader to be more precise at which prices to enter at.

Now as one can see, the dealing room has evolved over time ever since the technology in the financial world evolved as well. From simple tele registers to telephones, computers replaced the usual people who are shouting prices from brokers to other traders because computers can pass information much faster than voice can. So for those who have always been very curious about what happens in those Wall Street offices, the first place to visit is definitely the trading room since that is where all the action is.




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