Wall Street: Records, Paperwork & Profit

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In the midst of an otherwise dull mar ket, the New York Stock Exchange last week established an interesting new record. The exchange traded its 1,899,495,015th share of stock this year, exceeding the record for annual turnover that had been set only last year. Nobody in Wall Street knew for certain what the final quarter of the year would bring, but if activity continues at the pace of the first nine months, about 2.5 billion shares should change hands before the year ends.

The average daily volume of 9,875,-000 shares, a level that the exchange had not expected—or even hoped—to reach until 1975, is due to increased buying and selling by institutions that trade in large blocks of stock and thus shoot the totals higher. Many mutual funds, adopting a speculative mood, are turning over the shares in their portfolios far faster than they once did. And staid organizations outside the market are also coming in. Yale University two weeks ago announced that it was forming an investment company to plow more of its endowment money into lucrative common stocks. Such moves mean more paperwork for the exchange's 648 member organizations. But more active trading also means more commissions.