Chaos Makes a Comeback

MARKETBEAT
Market Insight From WSJ.com
--------------------------------------
from the floor of the NYSE
Wed 15 OCT 2008

[newspoem]

Chaos Makes a Comeback on Floor
Brokers Throw Body Checks,
Traders Jostle for Position:
Action at the NYSE
Has Even Market Vets Amazed

by Rob Curran
...
Brokers charged around shoulder-first &
jostled one another in front of specialist posts.
About a dozen floor brokers
scrummed around the post for Wachovia,
refereed by one of the specialist managers.
This was nothing, however, compared with last wk.
Massive client losses, shocking volatility
& boisterous trading had a draining effect,
floor brokers at the NYSE said.

Even Art Cashin, the head of floor operations
for UBS Financial Services at NYSE & a market sage
who finds precedent for every event, said he saw
2 of the craziest market moves of his career last wk
-- the swings in the last 45min. of trade Fri.
& the plunge in the last hr.Thurs.

“prices & morale were sinking rapidly,
& it felt as if something was going to happen
with the [entire] financial system. Then, on Fri.,
the market spastically jumped one way & the other.”

"[On Black Mon.,
[In 1987],
you didn't wake up
& wonder,
is there going 2B
a Merrill Lynch,
is there going 2B
Lehman Brothers?
You didn't think,
who is next?

I’m a mountain climber;
I climbed (Mt.) Everest”
said Alan Valdes, a floor-
broker with Hilliard Lyons.
“Climbing the ice fields
of (Mt.) Everest, I felt
safer & slept better.”