Wall Street: Instant Quotes

The New York Stock Exchange is more active than ever before—daily volume is running 12% above last year's average—and each day more than 70,000 investors phone their brokers to ask how their stocks are doing. This week Exchange President Keith Funston will introduce a computerized system to provide quick answers.

With the new IBM Market Data System, the process will be this: when an .investor calls in to ask for a stock quote, the broker can press a button on the base of his telephone and automatically connect into a computer at the exchange. He will then dial a four-digit number to identify which stock he wants to learn about (each of the 1,606 stocks on the Big Board has its own identification number). A recorded voice will instantaneously recite the stock's up-to-the-second price and volume, as well as its opening price and high and low for the day. Example: "G.M., open 100, high 101, low 99, last 100⅞, volume 317 hundred." Every time a trade is made, the recorded voice will automatically change to reflect it.

Similar to the American Exchange's "Am-Quote" system introduced last May, the Big Board's new system is symptomatic not only of the growing use of computers in American business but of the increasing automation in the stock market. Funston also hopes to automate trading in odd lots—fewer than 100 shares—which account for one-fifth of daily volume. When an investor places a small order, the broker will feed the information into a computer, which will execute the order at prices ⅛ to ¼ of a point above (buying) or below (selling) the most recent round-lot trade.