Monday, November 19, 2007

Floor Tickets

I know this will seem very obvious to the traders that were actually on the floor but for posterity I thought that it would be a good idea to explain the ticketing process.

Swish, thanks for sending me the actual floor tickets.

Traders carried a “trading book” that contained all of their outstanding orders and trading tickets that were used to legally bind a trade.

The tickets came in pad form with three per page. Each ticket was made up of three parts.

Once the details of trade had been verbally agreed to by the selling broker and the buying broker the following occurred:

1. The seller made out the ticket with all the trade information. In this case Broker #90 (First Canada Securities) is selling 100 shares of BCE (BCE INC) to Broker #85 (Scotia Capital)
2. The seller initialed the trade ticket on the bottom right and marked whether the trade was for a Non-Client (N) which was an employee of the firm or a for a firm inventory account. Alternatively, the trade could have been for a Registered Trader (RT) with an identifier mark that identifies the particular Registered Trader. Tickets that were left blank in this area were for clients. In this case the seller was acting on behalf of a client.
3. The seller then separated the three part auto transfer ticket, keeping the last part for his/her records.
4. The buyer then reviewed the details on the ticket. If the details on the ticket matched what had been verbally agreed to, the trader for #85 would then initial the ticket on the top. In this case the buyer “K” is identified as the Registered Trader.
5. The buyer would then separate the two remaining copies, keeping the second copy for his/her records.
6. The buyer would then pass the top copy (official trade details) to a TSE post clerk who would timestamp the ticket.
7. The ticket would then be passed to a TSE input operator who would then keypunch the information into the TSE system which in turn would post the trade to the ticker.

Trade disputes…very few, but if there was a dispute the original ticket was retrieved. A Floor Governor (member of the Floor Procedure Committee) and a Floor Official would review the floor ticket and compare the initials on the ticket to a record copy of initials. From that review a “ruling” was made as to whether the trade was legitimate or not.

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