sandwich bags from cars. Your mom would tell you to do it: “Now put the candy wrapper out the window, honey.” Stockbrokers are the last nonpsychotic people in the U.S. throwing garbage over their shoulders. Four thousand pounds of canceled buy and sell orders, scribbled stock quotes, and phone messages from the ex-wife about taking the kids this weekend are removed from the stock- exchange floor each day. I talked to one stockbroker who said he knew the market was getting intense when he caught himself tossing empty milk cartons on the kitchen linoleum at home. It’s the littering as much as anything that gives the stock market its free-for- all atmosphere. But it’s not free, and it’s not for all. In order to trade stocks on the NYSE, you need a “seat” on the exchange. The 1,366 seats are traded the way the stocks are and currently sell for more than $1 million apiece. Possessors of these seats do no sitting. A stockbroker may conduct millions of dollars of business in a day, but instead of a corner office with a Statue of Liberty view, he has an eighteen-inch space filled with phones, computer screens, and the infinite pieces of paper that attach themselves to anything involving money. And he can’t even get near this because a couple of clerks are in it taking orders to buy and sell. There are various kinds of brokers on the stock exchange. The floor broker works for a brokerage house. When you get a tip from your acupuncturist that Disney is going to buy Seagram and open a Scotch-and-Water Park in Boca Raton, the floor broker is the person who buys you your shares. He is your actual stockbroker. (And he will be a he. Only 169 seats on the Exchange are held by women.) The person you call your stockbroker is a salesman who doesn’t even sell stock, or buy it, either. He just sells you on buying and selling. The brokerage house makes money on the commissions, no matter which you do. Besides floor brokers, there are competitive traders who are independent businessmen buying and selling for their own accounts, specialist brokers who deal only in certain stocks, and two-dollar brokers who handle excess business for floor traders and can buy and sell for any brokerage. Two-dollar brokers are so-called because they used to get a two-dollar commission for every 100 shares of stock they traded. The commissions are now negotiated, but “what-the-fuck-is-this-costing-me brokers” takes too long to say. And that is how it would be said. One of the old-fashioned charms of the NYSE, besides the littering, is the constant use of fuck as a noun, verb, adverb, and
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