WALL STREET: Brokers on Wheels

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From the outside, the three blue-and-silver buses parked in front of the New York Stock Exchange this week looked like any other passenger buses. But inside, instead of seats, each had three offices filled with desks, radiotelephones, easy chairs, an outlet for a stock market ticker and a board listing 70 stocks. The buses bore the name Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Beane, the world's largest brokerage house (113 offices), and they were the firm's latest idea on how to bring Wall Street to Main Street.

Merrill Lynch hopes to use its freewheeling brokers to sell securities to suburbanites. Based in Chicago, Boston and Newark, the buses will tour five suburban areas around each city, hang out the Merrill Lynch shingle before supermarkets, factories and commuter stations. Sales men will hand out literature, lecture on the market, show new investors that they can buy stocks as easily as steaks.

The new Monthly Investment Plan, started by the Exchange two months ago (TIME, Feb. 8), gave Merrill Lynch a taste of what can be done to get new investors. After a slow start, the idea has brought 10,885 new accounts to brokers. By spending $45,000 on advertising, Merrill Lynch grabbed off 40% of the new investors (4,411 accounts), now sees a booming market in such areas as San Antonio, Omaha, Indianapolis and Detroit. One small company opened five accounts at the maximum monthly sum of $999 because it found the plan an excellent way to bank surplus funds and collect attractive dividends; another investor opened a $40-a-month account because he said he threw away that much money each month, wanted to discipline himself.

But mostly, the new investors were people who ordinarily never think about Wall Street as a place to put their savings. They included young married couples, factory workers, housewives with a few extra dollars of grocery money, G.I.s stationed abroad without much opportunity to spend their pay.