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October 11

Why brokers had to buy stocks in open outcry with shouts (even after digital screens were discovered)?

Why couldn't the process be a quiet and peaceful one?

Thanks, 182.232.181.189 (talk) 02:29, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The process was noisely, yet mainly peaceful. The open outcry is essentially an auction, in which stock is sold to the highest bidder. Current electronic trading is not much different from any online marketplace: goods (in this case stock) are offered for a certain price, and buyers decide whether they want to purchase at that price. Stock brokers and stock exchanges were used to traditional methods and not keen to overturn everything completely. New regulations had to be drawn up and agreed upon by many parties. From a technological point, the change to electronic trading involved much more than discovering that digital screens had been invented and could be bought. It needed powerful computer systems with trusted and usable specialized software and a fast and reliable network connecting the terminals with the mainframe. --Lambiam 07:28, 11 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Our article on the London Metal Exchange, "the last exchange in Europe where open-outcry trading takes place", says that it is an efficient method of quickly establishing market demand. But after having to work without outcry during the Covid-19 lockdown, they are now considering abolishing it. Alansplodge (talk) 11:33, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the U.S., the Chicago Board of Trade still uses open outcry; a famous scene from the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off shows it in operation. There's also several such scenes in the film Trading Places set at an unnamed commodities exchange in Philadelphia, likely modeled after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange or the New York Mercantile Exchange. --Jayron 32 16:53, 12 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]