1912

“Where the Common People Could Speculate”: The Ticker, Bucket Shops, and the Origins of Popular Participation in Financial Markets, 1880–1920 David Hochfelder

Sereno Pratt of the Wall Street Journal estimated that in 1912 only 60,000 people placed trades on the New York Stock Exchange, and as late as 1916 only 80 of the New York Stock Exchange’s 600 brokers ac- cepted trades of less than 100 shares. In contrast, in 1902 Haight and Freese claimed to have over 10,000 accounts. Some of those accounts, like the ones opened by the retired Philadelphia typesetter Ridgway Bowker and the Bostonian Charles Weiss, belonged to people who apparently believed that they were buying small amounts of stock through a legitimate broker.45