• The U.S. stock market (as represented by the Dow Jones Industrial Average) rose 496.5% from 63.90 on August 24, 1921 to 381.17 on September 3, 1929. The Dow then declined 89.2% from 381.17 on September 3, 1929 to 41.22 on July 8, 1932 (see the image showing the three-year decline, a page down from here).
• Some math details about margin leverage (can be skipped if you don't like algebra): Many people were leveraged 10-to-1 back in 1929, so they were wiped out long before this 89.2% decline ran its course. For example, suppose that you put down $100 of your money to buy $1,000 worth of stock, making up the shortfall using $900 borrowed from your broker. (Yes, I know, that sounds crazy, but how many readers did something similar for a house purchase?) Then your "margin rate," defined as position margin (i.e., what you put down) divided by position value (i.e., value of what you bought), is only 10%. Any margin trade has a multiplicative gain/loss factor of 1/[margin rate]. So, the multiplicative factor equals 1/10%=10 in this case, meaning that the impact on your wealth of any percentage movement in the stock price you bought is multiplied 10-fold. Thus, a newly established position is wiped out by a single 10% decline in the value of your stocks (because you lose 10%x10=100% in that case). If your broker fails to liquidate your position in time and your stock declines by more than 10%, then you lose more than 100%. That is, the stock you sold is not enough to pay back the loan from your broker, and you are on the hook for further debt that must be repaid from other assets. If you do not have enough other assets to pay back the loan, then you are insolvent, and you may also be bankrupt.
• The month of October in 1929 is most commonly associated with the beginning of the depression-era three-year downward slide in stock prices. On "Black Thursday" October 24, 1929, the market dropped dramatically at the open, but recovered (with help from the trades of leading Wall Street bankers) to end the day down only 2.1%. On "Black Monday" October 28, 1929, however, the market fell 13.5%. On "Black Tuesday" October 29, 1929, the market fell 11.7%. On Wednesday October 30, 1929, the market bounced back 12.3%. (We saw similar reversals of fortune in October 2008, though not on consecutive days: October 13, 2008, up 11.1%; October 15, 2008 down 7.9%; October 28, 2008, up 10.9%.)
• The five largest up moves and five largest down moves after Black Tuesday and before the trough of July 1932 were, in chronological order: October 30, 1929 (+12.3%), November 6, 1929 (-9.9%), November 14, 1929 (9.4%), June 22, 1931 (11.9%), September 24, 1931 (-7.95), October 5, 1931 (-10.7%), October 6, 1931 (-14.9% reversal when President Hoover moves to restore confidence in the U.S. banking system), December 18, 1931 (9.4%), January 4, 1932 (-8.1%), February 11, 1932 (9.5%). So, this was a volatile time period.
• Overall, the three-year decline in the markets from 1929 to 1932 was almost twice the size of the Global Financial Crisis decline from October 2007 to March 2009. Remember, however, that you could use much more leverage in 1929, 10-to-1, compared with only 2-to-1 nowadays. So, that made the depression-era decline even worse for investors. To offset that, however, the proportion of the population owning stocks back in 1929 (roughly 5%–7%; Perlo [1958]) was much less than it was in 2008 (roughly 62%; Gallup [2020]). The percent of U.S. adults holding stock in 2020 was about 55% (Gallup, 2020).
• Here is a 12-minute podcast about stock ticker tape and the crash of 1929. He hypothesizes about the impact of tape delays (see the delay meter picture below).
• I obtained the first 1929 ticker tape image below from the Web site for the Museum of American Finance, with their permission. They write that their piece of tape comes from approximately the first 45 minutes of NYSE trade on Tuesday October 29, 1929 ("Black Tuesday"). Unfortunately, the right-hand side quarter of their image has been cropped. The New York Times carried a story on January 29, 1997, reporting that the Museum bought this tape for USD5,000, at an auction in Strasburg, PA, having come from a private Boston broker who saved it, and it remained in the family until sold.
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  (Collection of the Museum of American Finance, NYC. Used with Permission.)
  
  
• The following six images come from a U.S. collector who asked me about his ticker tape. My opinion is that his tape is 100% genuine. You can see that the prints on this example are not as crisp as those on the example from the Museum of American Finance, because different ticker machines printed differently. The two examples do give, however, identical ticker symbols and prices. Note that the two examples complement each other because each example contains information that is not clear on the other example. Comparing the two examples, I am guessing that this example shows approximately the first five minutes of the NYSE ticker on Black Tuesday. Click on the images to get a magnified image.
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• I saw this Edison ticker machine plus tape for sale on eBay in September 2019. The eBay description said that the tape was from the last day that the machine was used, that the machine was from "Frank Zygmunt estate*," that it weights over 40 pounds, and has dimensions approximately 48x13x13 inches on stand, and 13x8 inches without the stand. I dated the tape to Monday December 12, 1960. *I think this is Frank D. Zygmuntowicz, who died December 6, 2010, but I am not 100% sure.
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• In 2021, I found a web site with vintage ticker tape machines for sale. The site is run by antique dealer Philip Gallant in Baltimore, MD. He says that he includes a piece of ticker tape, for display, with any machine that he sells. He sells other unusual items also.

  His ticker machines are rare older models, from before the great depression. So, I was curious to see whether his ticker tape might possibly be pre-1929. That would have been a very unlikely outcome—because I have never seen any pre-1929 ticker tape. He sent me an image, below, and I dated his tape to Thursday March 9, 1961. It can be no other day.

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  The symbols on the tape, their price stamps, and their recorded stock price ranges on Thursday March 9, 1961 are:

  • CMR (Continental Motors), 10 1/8, 10–10 1/4
  • GEN (Gen. Tel. & Elect.), 7 3/4, 27 1/2–29/12
  • RLM (Reynolds Metals), 1 7/8, 50 5/8–51 7/8
  • AF (Am. & Fgn Power), 10 1/2, 10 1/4–10 7/8
  • BLL (Bell International), 3 3/4, 13 3/4–14
  • RCA (Radio Corp. of America), 9 1/4, 58 3/8–59 5/8
  • GA (Glen Alden), 6 7/8, 16 1/4–16 7/8
  • FFS (Food Fair Stores), 39 7/8, 39 1/4–40
  • WU (Western Union), 9 5/8, 47–49 3/4

  I noticed that six of the nine stocks have the "handle" (i.e., the leading price digit(s)) dropped from the stock. For example, Radio Corp of America (RCA) was at 59 1/4 but the print shows only 9 1/4, and Western Union (WU) was at 49 5/8 but the print shows only 9 5/8. When the market was busy, dropping leading digits helped to reduce delays in the tape. (It was assumed that the traders were familiar enough with the market that they did not always need the handle; dropping the handle, and dating ticker tape with dropped handles, are discussed further in the August 26, 1966 example, further down this page).

  As soon as I saw the image of the tape, I knew the handles were missing on some of the stocks, and that it must have been a busy trading day. So, after dating the tape, I went looking for newspaper headlines from the next day. The New York Times (NYT) headline on the Friday morning (March 10, 1961) says, of Thursday March 9, "Market is mixed as volume soars: Trading exceeds 6 million shares for the third time since 1933." So, it was one of the three busiest trading days in almost 30 years. This unusual activity may be why the broker (or whoever) kept the tape at that time.

  For recent comparison, note that between January 2, 2019 and November 18, 2022, daily NYSE trading volume varied between 1.0 billion and 11.6 billion shares, with an average of 4.0 billion shares per day (NYSE, 2022)—an average that is over 650 times the trading volume on March 9, 1961. The median trading volume over this sample period was marginally higher than the mean, at 4.2 billion shares. The mean during the more recent Jan–Nov 2022 period was higher still, at 5.0 billion shares. It looks like the largest-volume trading day in 2019–2022 was January 27, 2021 (11.6 billion shares), when the Fed's FOMC meeting policy decision mentioned deteriorating trends in economic activity. (Aside: On this day there was also a doubling in price of GameStop stock, from 36.99 to 86.88, with 373.6 million shares traded. It had also doubled the previous day on 714.4 million shares volume.)

• Turning the clock back 60 years to 1961 again, I flipped through that Friday March 10, 1961 NYT and I stumbled upon a story about ticker tape delays, prompted, in part, by the very busy trading day. The headline on the story is "New High-Speed Ticker is Eyed as Successor for Tape Device," written by Alexander R. Hammer (NYT, Friday March 10, 1961, pp. 37, 44). The story mentions two interesting things that I was not aware of. First, Hammer writes that when ticker tape reports on sales lagged five minutes behind live trading on the NYSE floor, "flash prices" were used to show the latest transactions. He shows a simulated ticker tape with five regular-looking stock quotes bracketed by "FLASH." and "END.FLASH" on the top line:
  

  I figure they must have given flash prices for leading issues only, cutting into the ticker feed to report them on time, rather than with a delay. (The notoriously unreliable Investopedia says that "Flash prices came into existence with the advent of computerized stock trading during the mid-1990s." My NYT article is from 1961, however, and it is not described as a new development.) Second, Hammer shows a simulated alternative ticker tape that was 3–3 1/2 inches wide, instead of the 3/4 inch tape in use at the time. He says that this wider tape was from a prototype of a new faster ticker machine that printed quotes horizontally across a vertically-printing tape, one quote per row, and was much faster than the existing ticker machines. The NYSE said that it would take two years of development before the newer faster ticker machine replaced the older one. As far as I know, however, the prototype never came to fruition. There might have been some push-back from brokers and traders used to reading horizontally-printed ticker tape. In fact, we still have horizontal ticker tape, albeit in electronic form, 60+ years later. So, there must be something about the horizontal format that appeals to the human eye; maybe it is that your eye does not have to jump down to the next row at any time.

• I saw this tape for sale on eBay in September 2019. The tape is from Thursday April 15, 1965. The vendor said that he visited the NYSE as a child with his parents, and that (as far as he recalled) there was a stock ticker in the visitor's gallery and that they were invited to take some tape as a souvenir, and he took several feet.
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• I saw this piece of tape for sale on eBay in March 2021. I was quite surprised to find it was from the same week as the next two pieces. I thought that this piece may also have come from Mr. Ramsay, but the vendor said no. It came via a family member who he thought had visited the NYSE on that date. Compare the ink color and paper color with those of the next two pieces; the prints here are nice and clear and you can still see the #56 Purple ink, but the color has faded a bit.
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• This is my original piece of ticker tape, given to me by Mr. Ramsay. I put a ruler on it, and it is exactly 1 inch wide. I have about 10 feet of tape. Note that someone has circled several key figures. I put an image of part of this tape over the top right corner of the cover of a book I published in 2000. The purple ink has retained its color, even after 50+ years. I showed this to finance-major students in my class, telling them that they were welcome to touch it if they wanted to, because it was likely the only piece they would ever have the chance to touch in their life; a few students always wanted to come and handle it.
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• I was amazed to find that this piece of tape being sold on eBay was dated only one day after my piece of tape. From the more than 15,000 possible dates (and many more if you go earlier), it seemed very unlikely that this tape would differ from mine by only one day. After exchanging emails with the vendor, we decided that he likely got his tape from the same gentleman that I got my tape from, some 15 or so years earlier. I think I recall that Mr. Ramsay told me that he had two reels of ticker tape in his basement. He likely saved reels from two successive days. Perhaps he pulled them from the accumulated trash on the same day. Perhaps he did that when the broker he was working for was stopping using physical tape and was switching to electronic reporting. I figure one reel eventually went to this vendor, while part of the other came to me.
• I once did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that at least 100 million miles of ticker tape was produced between 1867 and 1994. The fact that my tape and this tape, although examined 15–20 years after they were each obtained, both came from the same source, reinforces the fact that although 100 million miles of the stuff was produced, stock ticker tape is actually very rare nowadays! It was all thrown, or thrown out, or both.
• For the largest image, (the one with the green background), I did not immediately know that it was the same date as the other two. So, I set about dating it. As mentioned for the March 9, 1962 example above, the "handle" is missing from some of the stock prices. That is, the leading digit(s) has(have) been dropped from some stock prices. For example, IBM says "7 7/8" but was actually trading at 317 7/8. The vendor told me that "During busy times, the ticker tape would occasionally drop the volume figures and everything but the last dollar digit. The machines could only print so many characters per minute, so this was a way to keep the ticker running in real time. Tape delays made people nervous." Elsewhere I read that if the tape delay was more than one minute, the handles would be dropped, and volume information might be dropped also, unless the volume was 5,000 shares or more. The vendor sent me a link to the last image in this group (tape-delay machine).

  Missing handle(s) makes the matching process a bit more complicated, because my Excel code has to allow for multiple possible unknown handles. My Excel code looks for the full price on that day in the database, or the full price with the first digit shaved off, or the full price with two digits shaved off (I also had to do this with the ash tray example below).

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• These artistic ticker-tape ash/pin trays were advertised on eBay in August 2019. Like the August 26, 1966 tape, the handles are missing, and I needed some special code to identify the day(s). These say "A DECORATIVE CRAFT - Florentia - HAND MADE IN ITALY" on the reverse. The buyer of these contacted me and told me that these are roughly seven inches in diameter, which surprised me at first. Most of the tape is from Thursday December 7, 1967. One piece of the tape (with prints for MDE, LSG, HCA, RST on it), however, looks a little different from the others. After some careful deduction, I am convinced it is from Tuesday November 19, 1968. I suspect these ash trays were made in late 1968. There were ticker machines on ocean liners and in foreign cities. So, the ticker tape may have been printed in the US and carried to Italy, or it may have been printed in Europe to start with. It may even have been printed on a boat headed for Italy!
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• In 2021, I was sent pictures of an ash/pin tray that is almost identical to the one above. I assume it was created by the same craftsperson. I dated the ticker tape with 100% certainty to Thursday November 21, 1968.
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• In 2021, I was sent pictures of a jewelry box with almost identical patterns to the previous two items. I dated some of the ticker tape as being from Thursday Dec 7, 1967, with 100% certainty. Some of the other tape is from Dec 5, 7, or 11, 1967. In practice, it is likely all from the same day (i.e., December 7, 1967). Note that this is the same date as one of the ash/pin trays shown above. The ticker symbol and price prints did not show up clearly on the images that were sent to me (e.g., see below). So, I asked the owner to read them carefully. He made some understandable mistakes reading the prints (e.g., sending me three ticker symbols that have never existed, and misreading a price stamp), but we figured it out in the end. It was a very enjoyable piece of detective work.
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• This tape was originally advertised on eBay as being from 1972. The vendor was surprised when I pinpointed it to May 18, 1973. I was surprised by the late date on this tape. At the time, I did not realize that the tickers were still running in 1973. The prints here are very clear and the ink color is excellent.
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• If the last date surprised me, then this date amazed me: April 9, 1975. One vendor (not the one for this tape) told me that "The first fully electronic machines, that could outpace the paper tape, came out in 1960, and started getting a big share of the market by 1964. The paper tape machines probably ended production around 1966/1967, but were not retired. They ran side-by-side with the new machines in larger firms. Certainly they were too outdated by 1982 to keep up, but [I am] not sure when the last one ran. I seem to recall a roll dated 1976, but [that is] not definite." He also gave me the following quote from 1971 "paper ticker tape is so rare these days that New York City has had to ask brokers with such tickers to hoard the tape so that there will be enough on hand to make a decent showing when a Broadway parade is held." If you know where this quote is from, please use my email, below, to let me know. (See further discussion of ticker tape parades further down this page.)
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• This piece is a full 10 years later than the previous tape: Wednesday May 1, 1985. I saw this for sale July 10, 2020 on eBay, out of New Jersey. It looks like a full reel of tape. It is surprisingly badly faded, but the interior appears less faded. This is the latest-dated tape I have seen printed using what looks like Western Union's old #56 Purple, Ticker Ink.
• I matched 10 prints: GIS, ROK, MCN, LTV, AVP, NGE, MOB, D, HZN, and IU. Oddly, I think I see "QMAN" on the tape, but I can find no record of that stock. My best guess right now is that it was a CBOE equity option on the old Manville Corp (I do find the ticker QMAN mentioned in the manual to the old Berkeley Options Database, but it was delisted two years earlier; perhaps it got re-used for the same purpose). If you know what QMAN was, please let me know.
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• Well, I thought this was impossible. This piece and the next come from the 1990s. I found the following image at Getty's Web site. It is their property, but they have it mislabeled at their site as being from the 1970s. Note that this tape lists ticker symbols in alphabetical order, and without volumes, rather than in trading time order. Sure enough, after double checking, I can confirm that these are all closing prices on May 23, 1991.
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• I found the following piece for sale on eBay. The vendor said it came from an estate sale in Chicago. At first, I thought it was some sort of fabrication/fake. I contacted someone in the U.S. who suggested that it is not a fabrication of any sort, but rather that in discount broker offices in the 1990s, the brokers would sometimes use an old ticker machine that had previously been retired. Perhaps the machine was not well maintained, which explains the "sloppy printing, cheap ink, and a residual line produced from a dirty (inky) pressure roller" (quote from my source). The paper also appears to be quite roughly cut. I have seen ticker timer tape (as used by physicists) for sale on Amazon.com that has this same rough-cut look; I do wonder whether that was used here. Note that the ink used here is not Western Union's old #56 Purple, Ticker Ink of the older tape above.

  My contact suggested that this ticker machine would have been in the broker's front office because some, perhaps older, customers expected to see a ticker machine in a brokerage office. Also, it added a little noise to the office which gave an air of busy-ness. Also, some of the older brokers had lived with ticker machines all their lives, and did not want to give them up. Note that the following day, Friday April 1, 1994, was an exchange holiday for Good Friday. I suggested to the vendor that someone knew they were going to have a long weekend, they felt relaxed about it, and they grabbed the tape to take home for their kids to play with, or just for fun, or something like that. Alternatively, perhaps the analog data feed was being discontinued at the end of the first quarter of 1994, and this was the last day that the ticker machines ran.

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• A contact sent me the following image, below left. He thinks it came from an eBay auction in 2002. The prices are in decimals, for the first time. At first I thought they were prices on 16ths, 32nds, 64ths, etc., and only rounded to two decimals, but no, these stocks stopped trading on 1/8ths etc. about five months before this date, on January 29, 2001 (see this LA Times Article).
• I checked every date from January 2, 1930 to Dec 29, 2017, and there is only one date that matches the prices on this decimal ticker tape. Nothing else comes close to matching. It is Wed June 13, 2001. In addition to the prices on the tape matching only that day, the price changes, for example, AOL 52.56+0.46 match exactly the closing prices from the previous day, Tuesday June 12, 2001. That is, for each of the five price stamps, if I take the + numbers and add them to the closing prices from the previous day, I get the price stamp on the tape. However, these price stamps are definitely not the closing prices on June 13th. So, they must be prices sampled strictly within the trading day, with a price change to indicate the change from the previous day's close at that point during the day. I have not seen ticker tape before where the individual stock price is given along with the change from the previous day's close. Two other odd things about the tape are that it does not have volume and my eye tells me it is 0.75 inches wide, and not the old 1 inch wide tape.
• AOL is America Online, SNE is Sony Corp, RSH is Radio Shack, GMH is tracking stock for GM's subsidiary Hughes Electronics (19851231–20031222), GLW is Corning Glass.
• My contact told me that in 2001 there was a company making replica universal tickers that printed real-time quotes when hooked to a computer (see www.stocktickercompany.com). He said that this would also explain the thinner tape, as one inch tape is "too fat" for a universal ticker to operate smoothly. He said that the replica couldn't print fast enough to track the entire market. So, you created your own list of stocks to track, and it limited itself to those companies. He said that they sold a dozen or more machines in the first few years to brokerage firms and museums. They also sold custom ticker tape printed with whatever you wanted. I contacted The Stock Ticker Company in June 2018 and they replied to confirm that they were the only folks with working stock tickers in 2001, and so it looks like it was produced on one of their machines. I also included below right an image from their Web site showing tape coming out of one of their machines. As of September 2022, they advertise a very handsome working Universal Stock ticker replica for $22,995 and rolls of 0.75 inch wide ticker tape for sale for $99.95 per roll. Given the fine craftsmanship in these machines, I think that's a fair price.
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• An eBay purchaser sent me these images. Although this purports to be genuine ticker tape, it is a fabrication. There is no date with recorded NYSE prices on these stocks that line up with the price stamps on the tape.
• This fabrication is a double-sided piece of tape, commemorating a record-breaking deal in AT&T stock. The dates are within the few months just before the breakup of the old Ma Bell company into the baby bells. Before the breakup was complete, there was an overlap period in late 1983 when the old AT&T traded side-by-side with the new AT&T stock which would not be officially listed on the NYSE until February 16, 1984. During that overlap period, you could buy the old AT&T (ticker symbol T) and the new AT&T (ticker symbol "T WI") at the same time. The "T WI" stock trades would not settle until the new stock was subsequently issued (mid-February 1984). So, it is called "when issued" stock. The little W over the I stands for when issued. (That is, the stock does not yet exist, but you are trading it based on its near-future listing.)
• Neither side of this tape is an actual stock ticker tape printout from the day indicated because the prices shown did not all exist on those days. This is a commemorative fabrication, created after the dates on the tape. It suspect that it was printed on an actual ticker machine, but I cannot tell for sure. If so, it was run through twice, to print both sides.
• I think someone gave the printer a December 6, 1983 newspaper with the December 5 prices for FNC, NL, AXP, ACY, C, BHC, TEI, and CAT, along with the actual trade prices in T and "T WI" from November 30 and December 1, respectively, and the numbers were merged and printed on or soon after December 6, 1983. December 6, 1983 is the only day in the database that is consistent with these non-AT&T prices.
• One side of the tape is more faded, probably from sitting on a desk facing one way for years. It looks like plastic screws have replaced the original steel ones. Note that the handle has been dropped in several places (e.g., National Lead NL at 16 and CityCorp FNC at 35 1/8). In total, the tape reports $856.4 million worth of T and "T WI" stock traded. These were likely to be "block trades" negotiated in the "upstairs market" at the NYSE. Loeb (1983) discusses trading costs for such trades, but his research does not extend to block trades of this record-breaking size. My educated guess is that the market maker who handled these trades (the vendor said he was at Goldman) made at least $50 million by brokering the deal. It could easily have been double that. (...and this is in 1983 dollars!).
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• I saw the following item for sale on eBay during August 2019. Although it purports to be genuine ticker tape, it is a fabrication. The first entry looks like it says October 31, 1996, but there is no date any time between 1930 and 2017 inclusive with recorded NYSE prices on these stocks that line up with the six price stamps on the tape.
• I can match four of the six prices on October 31, 1996 and November 1, 1996 (DIS, IBM, CPB, WMT). On October 31, 1996, however, XON had a low of 87 7/8 and a high of 89 1/4. So, 83 5/8 is not a valid price for XON on that day. Similarly, on October 31, 1996, GM traded between 52 5/8 and 53 7/8. So, 48 3/8 is not a valid price for GM on that day. A similar argument applies on November 1, 1996. I think this is a modern creation, perhaps printed on an old ticker machine, but perhaps just printed on a laser printer using a scan of some 1990s tape and Adobe Photoshop.
• Like the following fabrication, I wondered if October 31, 1996 (that's Halloween) was the date someone retired, or it might be a Lucite block to commemorate some merger or acquisition deal. The Campbell's Soup trade is very large (nine million shares; see "how to read ticker tape" below). I found a CNN page suggesting that a Campbell's Soup heir sold nine million shares on this day for $720 million (corresponding to this trade at $80). I wonder if the broker who handled this trade produced this Lucite fabrication as a memento for those involved. The vendor confirmed (August 20, 2019) that the Lucite block came from the estate sale of a NY broker. The slotted round-headed screws on this fabrication and the next are consistent with the fabrication being at least 10 years old, but perhaps the screws are new old stock. This one looks like it has faded from years on a desk near a window. This one and the next look like the same person made them.
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• I saw the following item for sale on eBay during 2018. Although it purports to be genuine ticker tape, the quotes are in decimals, which places it after January 2001, which seems unlikely unless it is a fabrication or a replica. The first entry looks like it says March 10, 2005, which is consistent with decimal pricing, but there is no date any time between 1930 and 2017 inclusive with recorded NYSE prices on these stocks that line up with the stamps on the tape.
• I can match three of the five prices on September 1, 1998 (HD, KRB, ACF) and another three on March 25, 2004 (HD, KRB, LU), and there are 25 days where I can match two of the prices, including two days in March 2005 (KRB, ACF), but on March 10th, 2005, only one price matches (ACF). The closest days bracketing March 2005 that match the price on MRK are February 23, 2004 and June 21, 2007. So, I think this is a modern creation, perhaps printed on an old ticker machine, but perhaps just printed on a laser printer using a scan of some 1990s tape and Adobe Photoshop.
• I wondered if March 10, 2005 was the date someone retired, and if these are the prices at which the retiree liquidated a large portfolio, perhaps at some time around that date, plus or minus a year or two, but not all on the same day. Alternatively, it might be set in a Lucite block to commemorate some merger or acquisition deal. I noticed, for example, that KRB stopped trading on December 30, 2005.
• A contact suggested it might have been printed using a replica from The Stock Ticker Company, but I think that seems unlikely in this case (because the tape appears to be 1 inch wide, not 0.75 inches wide, because the prices don't match any genuine day, and because the print quality is so poor—all in contrast to the June 13, 2001 example above, that is of excellent quality).
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• I saw the following item for sale on eBay during April 2020. The vendor has old unused Western Union ticker tape reels for sale. The pack clearly states 3/4 inch width, as seen with the ruler. The last image shows that as you get close to the end of the reel, the edge has purple ink as a warning. I have seen the same thing on rolls of receipt paper in the supermarket, but I have never seen a piece of imprinted ticker tape with this ink at the side of it. By manipulating the image and performing some measurements, my estimate is that the full roll is six and one-quarter inches in diameter. I do not yet know the length.
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This section is based on multiple sources, including Barron's Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms (2003), and Barron's Finance and Investment Handbook (2003).

• First, I hope it is obvious that the ticker symbols (e.g., "GE" for General Electric, and "PN" for Pan American) are called "ticker symbols" because they were printed on the ticker machine, and the ticker machine was called a "ticker" machine both because of the loud ticking noise it made as the symbols and prices were printed and because the minimum allowable price variation (an eighth of a dollar for high-priced stocks in the old days) is known as a tick. (So, all prices and price changes printed on the ticker are in multiples of one tick). You can hear a stock ticker in the first few seconds of this old movie clip. The movie is about Thomas Edison, who invented the best-known ticker machine, but the ticker machine was invented by Edward Calahan in 1867, patented in 1868, before Edison's 1871 invention, patented in 1873. Here is another short movie clip with ticker sounds. Here is a short promo from the manufacturer of fine replica ticker machines that contains ticker noises. Here is a one-minute video from a guy who connected an old ticker to his laptop. The ticker machine is ticking without printing to paper. He also has a two-minute video with ticking and printing to paper from the 1:30 mark. It's quite loud! The glass dome over the older machines suppressed the noise to some extent—in addition to helping to keep the machine's innards clean. This video has ticker sounds from the 3:14 mark.
• From 1975 onward, a consolidated tape was printed that included prints from different exchanges. An ampersand symbol sits between the ticker symbol and the exchange identifier. So, looking at the April 9, 1975 (b image) tape, we see "EK&X 90 3/4", which says that Eastman Kodak was traded at 90 and three quarters on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. "A" was for the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), "B" was for Boston, "C" was for the Chicago Stock Exchange or Cincinnati (there is disagreement in my readings), "M" was for the Mid-American Stock Exchange in Chicago, "P" was for the Pacific Stock Exchange (most likely San Francisco), "T" was for the Third Market (i.e., OTC, mostly Nasdaq), "X" was for the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, "O" for other markets (including INSTINET). No letter indication means it was executed on the NYSE.
• When a price is preceded by an "s", the number preceding the "s" indicates how many round lots (i.e., 100-share lots) were traded. So, "SPS 5s10" on the April 9, 1975 (b image) tape, indicates 500 shares of SPS traded at $10 per share. No "s" indicates a single round lot of 100 shares.
• For 10,000 or more shares, no abbreviation is used. For example, on the March 31, 1994 (figure b) tape I see "MAX 10s4.13.16" which means 1,000 shares of MAX traded at 4 and thirteen sixteenths, but I also see "COL 110.000s39 5/8" which I read as 110,000 shares of COL traded at 39 and five eighths. I think that the dot followed by three zeroes means that the number preceding the dot is in 1,000s, and the number after the dot is an actual count (in this case zero).
• I already mentioned the handle being dropped to save time. In addition, if you look at the April 9, 1975 (a image) we see "WMB 5s 34 1/4. 5s 1/4" meaning 500 shares of WMB at 34 and one quarter, followed by another 500 at 34 and one quarter. We also see "GE 45 1/4 1/4" meaning 100 GE at 45 and one quarter followed by another 100 GE at 45 and one quarter.
• Sometimes, however, when a tape delay was in progress, repeated transactions at the same price were not printed.
• On the May 18, 1973 (a image) tape, we see "T 52 3/8 T.WS 2s6 1/4" meaning one round lot (i.e., 100) shares of AT&T executed at 52 and three eighths, followed by 200 AT&T warrants executed at 6 and one quarter. Warrants are stock options issued by the company, rather than options issued by the CBOE.
• Two very small "s" symbols stacked on top of each other are used to indicate that the count of shares following is for a stock that does not have a round lot of 100. For example, on the NYSE higher-priced preference shares and inactive stocks might have a round lot of only 10 shares. On other exchanges the size of a round lot in such stocks might differ from 10. The unusual size of the round lot is not given on the tape.
• When a transaction is reported out of proper sequential time order, a note ".SLD" was appended. We can see that on the August 25, 1966 (a image) tape where it says "TDY.SLD 3s90 3/5". I can also see one on the March 31 1994 (c image) where it says WAS.TFS.SLD.LAST 3s 46 3/4. See also this Nasdaq page which says that SLD is a "Shortened version of 'sold last sale,' which shows up on the consolidated tape when a large change (one point for lower priced securities and two points for higher-priced securities) occurs between transactions."
• OPD indicates an opening transaction that has been delayed.
• SLR followed by a number indicates a seller's option and the number of days to maturity.
• When an error was made, CORR (for correction) preceded the corrected price. Such a correction can be seen on the March 31 1994 (c image) where it says "CORR TFS 3s47". ERR or CXL indicate that the following information is to be ignored (presumably to test something). I also see "CANCEL" on the Trans-Lux movie ticker in the next image. I assume that this is for an erroneous trade that took place, that was subsequently canceled when both parties realized the error (click to enlarge).
  
• Different share classes are also indicated. For example, on the March 31 1994 (c image) we can see "VIA.B 5s" (but I cannot see the price) for Viacom class B shares. In the Herst envelope to Hicks, below, you can see 11.B for BO B-class stock. Oddly, the "B" appears in the price line not the ticker symbol line, but this is a fabrication, and unreliable.
• Other information is also given, like approximate volume in the last two hours, or level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the Transportation Average, or the Utilities Average, or the Financials Average. We can see this in the August 25, 1966 (b and c images) tape, where the reader of the tape (Mr. Ramsay?) has circled some of the information.
• I can see "LSO.XD" for LSO stock that is ex-dividend on the August-26-1966 (a image) tape.
• ".WS" means warrants and ".WD" means when distributed. Note that WS for warrants, WI for when issued, and WD for when distributed are symbols that are still used for the same purposes by the NYSE (NYSE, 2015).
• A prefix of "Q" indicates that the company is in receivership or bankruptcy. A suffix of "Pr" (either "PR" or a "P" with an "r" tucked under the loop of the "P") indicates preferred stock (you can see examples of each on the October 29, 1929 tape and on the May 23, 1991 tape, respectively). A suffix of ".CV" indicates convertible stock.
• A "W" stacked above an "I" means when issued, as in the AT&T breakup example above.
• I still do not know what "S" stacked above a "T" mean, which can be seen in images above. I do note that for Homestake Mining (HM) shown at 48 1/8 on May 18 1973, the stock had rocketed up 65% over the previous two months (and 100% over the previous 4.5 months). So, my best guess is that S/T means a short sale. I wondered, but rejected, whether it signaled a stock split, but this stock had had no recent splits, and it kept going up, hitting $99 per share eight months later on January 15, 1974, before decreasing again. The $99 stopping point is an example of reversals caused by limit orders to sell, known as the "Osborne Effect" (Crack, 2022). Please let me know if you know for sure what the S over the T means.
• I do not know what the little "8" means in the BHW quote (or the following RDG quote) on the December 12, 1960 Edison ticker tape picture, above. It says "BHW 49 1/4 .8 49. 1/2", which looks like one round lot of BHW (Bell & Howell) at 49 and a quarter, but I have not seen the "8" before. I think that 49. 1/2 means a round lot at 49 and another round lot at 49 1/2. Could the 8 signify an odd lot? That is, only 8 shares at 49, instead of a round lot at 49? I doubt it. Perhaps the strike was poor, and it was meant to be a trade at 3/8 (which would make sense between a trade at 1/4 and another at 1/2), but the 8 looks too big. I see another little 8 for the RDG print after the BHW print on the same tape. I can also see some little 8 symbols on the tape in the Trans-Lux Movie Ticker between the 12-second and 19-second mark on this YouTube video. Please let me know if you know what the little 8 means, or what you guess it might mean.
• Finally, the words "FLASH" and "END.FLASH" are used to brack "flash prices," as discussed in the March 9, 1961 example above.

• Ticker Tape Girls 1918
  • This image comes from this US government source with no restriction on its use. The accompanying text says "Girls operate stock boards at Waldorf-Astoria. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is employing girls to operate tickers and stock exchange boards. The Waldorf is the first to employ girls in its various departments, in order to release men for war work." The picture is dated November 12, 1918. Compare the pattern on the tiled floor with the pattern on the ash/pin trays shown above.
  • 
  
  
• Ticker Tape Parades
  • I think the first ticker tape parade in New York was an impromptu one in 1886 to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Every ticker tape parade, like the one below for Amelia Earhart (her second parade, June 20, 1932), is recorded in black granite stripes (like the one below for Charles Lindbergh) embedded on the parade route along a section of Broadway in NYC known as the "Canyon of Heroes." I assume that these long stripes are meant to be evocative of ticker tape.
  • 
  
  
• Trans-Lux Directory of New York Stock Exchange Ticker Symbols (1936?)
  • In the next section I have a 1952 photograph of the NYSE floor. In the background you can see the giant projected Trans-Lux Movie Ticker, used by the NYSE from January 1923 to the 1970s. Trans-Lux still exists and still sells large projection systems, often for sports games. TBT (1998) attributes the invention of the Trans-Lux Movie Ticker to Percival N. Furber.
  • Trans-Lux distributed printed tri-fold cards titled "The Trans-Lux Directory of New York Stock Exchange Ticker Symbols" to decrypt the ticker symbols on their "Trans-Lux Movie Ticker." Here are the cover and three page views from that tri-fold document. If the ticker symbols on the cover are genuine, they suggest (matching on Z, T, and J, as Woolworths, AT&T, and Standard Oil, respectively) that the cover image is from February 19, 1936, and the tri-fold card may be from later that year. (Note that Alfred L. Dennis is listed on page 27 of the Bellevill and Nutley Directory of 1928 as a partner at Post and Flagg, at the NJ address on the cover. So, he could easily have still been working there 8 years later.) I also have some images from an older-style 1928 tri-fold Trans-Lux Directory, but the images are of lower resolution and the ticker symbols are impossible to identify.
  • (Cover),
  • (Tickers A–PE),
  • (Tickers A–CO, PEG-UEF), and
  • (Tickers UEL–ZP).
  
  
• The Nation's Market Place (May 16/19, 1952)
  • The following image of the NYSE floor is from a postcard. Judging by the ticker tape prints and the clock, the photograph was taken at about 2:40 PM on either Friday May 16, 1952 or Monday May 19, 1952. I checked every day from January 1926 to December 2019, and the only other day it can be is the intervening Saturday, May 17, 1952, but Saturday trade at this time ended at 12 noon. The Trans-Lux Movie Ticker is showing X at 37 7/8 (US Steel), TXY at 11 7/8 (Chicago Yellow Cab Company; see discussion below), CN at 18 3/4 (NY Central RR), J at 22 1/2 (Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. which merged with Republic Steel in 1984; see discussion below), JM at 72 1/2 is Jones Manville, and T at 155 3/8 is AT&T.
  •   
  • There are several interesting things to note in this picture:
    1. May 17, 1952, the only other candidate day with these prices, was a Saturday. I read in a couple of places that the NYSE traded Monday to Friday 10:00AM–3:00PM, and Saturday 10:00AM–Noon, until 30 September 1952, when the Saturday session was abolished and weekday hours were extended to 3:30PM. The clock, however, shows that this is 2:40PM. So, this is unlikely to be the Saturday. I have shown the back of a different card, but it would have been the same on this one. It says that the NYSE closes at 3:30 weekdays. So, I think this is a post-September-1952 card using an image from May 1952. Note also that back then, Friday's NYSE Transactions prices appeared in Saturday's WSJ, and Saturday's NYSE Transactions prices appeared in Monday's WSJ.
    2. Looking at the WSJ NYSE Transactions from Monday May 19, 1952, the Saturday was a quiet trading day. According to "Abreast of the Market" (WSJ, Monday, May 19, 1952, p. 15), "The financial district Saturday suffered through the slowest short session since May 21. 1949. No common stock and only one preferred Issue varied as much as two points. Thus ended the dullest week since August, 1949." The Friday and the Monday must have been very quiet too, which is why I ended up with three candidate days, even though I used as many as six ticker symbols. (Recall the two market principles discussed in the introduction? This dull market is an unusual breach of the first principle.) I suspect that the unusually slow trading day prompted an Exchange employee to take this opportunity for a photograph. Quite a few people on the floor are looking directly at the camera. Although this was a quiet week, I wonder whether Saturdays were quiet in general, and that's why the NYSE stopped trading on Saturdays just four months later.
    3. The stock with ticker symbol J is clearly trading at 22 1/2. Michayluk (2008) is an article about single-letter ticker symbols. His Table 1 says that at this time, J was the ticker symbol for Standard Oil of NJ (which became Exxon and then Exxon Mobil); the 1936 Trans-Lux Directory mentioned above also says that J is Standard Oil of NJ. Both my Univ. Chicago database and the WSJ NYSE Transactions show, however, that Standard Oil of NJ was trading in the range 75 1/2–76 3/8, 75 3/8–75 1/2, and 75 3/8–76 on May 16, 17, and 19, 1952, respectively. In fact, Standard Oil of NJ traded at 22 1/2 on only 16 days out of 24,792 days between January 1926 and December 2019: 15 days in April, May, and June of 1932 and one day in September of 1939. On three of these 16 days, CN traded in the correct range, but none of the other stocks' trading ranges admit the pictured prices on any of these days. So, J in this picture is not Standard Oil of NJ. Looking at the WSJ NYSE Transactions, I see Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp.'s stock price ranging between 22 1/4 and 22 1/2 on May 16, 17, and 19, 1952, and I see no other likely candidate (Ferry Morse, Gen Pub Utility, King Seeley, and Lane Wells traded at this level but they seem unlikely candidates for this ticker symbol). I conclude that the NYSE was most likely using J for Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. at that time, contrary to the multiple sources I named; my impression is that there was a looseness in the use of ticker symbols back then, and that the exchanges used what the market participants understood, which was not necessarily what it said in the documentation. It is also possible that J was used for both stocks at that time, and that the considerable difference in prices per share avoided confusion, though this seems less likely. It could also be a typo by the operator entering the stock prices. Finally, it is possible that this image has been doctored, not for any deceptive purpose by the postcard maker, but just to make it look nicer. The Trans-Lux ticker looks perhaps just a little too good. I have seen other scans of postcards with the same photograph where the Movie Ticker image is a little fuzzy, but the people look just as clear, and it is not obviously a "J" in that position. Here is an example (click to see it enlarged):
       
    4. I could not find the ticker symbol TXY (trading here at 11 7/8) in my Univ. Chicago database, and I saw no likely candidates in the WSJ NYSE Transactions from Monday May 19, 1952, but I found TXY listed as the Chicago Yellow Cab Company in the 1936 Trans-Lux Directory shown above. TXY later had the ticker symbol CYC. My Univ. Chicago database shows TXY (an NYSE-listed stock) trading at 11 7/8 on May 13, 1952, but with no record of trade on May 16, 17 or 19. TXY was, however, quoted between 11 1/2 and 12 on each of these days. Perhaps the displayed price is a trade on a regional exchange being reported in NY, but not showing up on the NY tape or in the WSJ. I thought, however, that regional trades did not appear on the NYSE tape until 1975 (mentioned below on this page). The only other stock displayed here with a trading range on May 13 incorporating the displayed price is J. So, this is not May 13. Try pronouncing TXY out loud to see why this symbol was chosen for a cab company.
    5. Two observations: Look at the hats hanging up at bottom left, and also count how many women you can see. That's 1952. Click here to see the NYSE floor in 2020, from roughly the same angle as the 1952 postcard. It is temporarily empty in this picture because of the COVID pandemic.
  
  
• Herman Herst Signed Philatelic Covers with Pasted Prank Ticker Tape for Fifth Anniversary of Crash of 1929
  • Let me extend a warm welcome to all readers of The American Philatelist: Monthly Journal of the American Philatelic Society and members of The Austrian Collectors' Association of the Liechtenstein Philatelie. I particularly look forward to hearing from any of you who have Herman Herst Ticker Tape envelopes from 1934 (timcrack@alum.mit.edu).

    Let me take a moment to compare ticker tape collecting to postage stamp collecting. Adhesive paper postage stamps were first used in 1840, 27 years before New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) ticker tape was first used, in 1867. Stock ticker machines started to be retired in the late 1960s, but they did not stop running completely until 1994. So far, postage stamps have outlived the ticker's demise by roughly the same three decades that they predated its birth.

    Unlike ticker tape, postage stamps were printed in advance of being used, then typically affixed to an envelope or package, and then subsequently mailed to some recipient. So, their life had multiple stages over some period of time: design, creation, affixion, and delivery. Each stamp is a mini work of art, often framed in its own perforated border. Stamps cry out to be collected! If they were larger, you could hang them on your wall. (In fact, I do have several framed stamps on my walls.) In November 2022, I looked at eBay.com and saw over 11,000 "postage stamp" listings, ranging from about $1 to about $7,000. An advertisement from Hipstamp.com in the July 2023 issue of The American Philatelist claims they have 7 million+ stamps from 1,200+ sellers. As a consequence, anyone can amass an interesting and diverse collection of attractive stamps at prices to suit their budget. Many stamps are common, some are rare, and some are exceedingly rare. Stamp collections are as varied and interesting as the collectors themselves.

    Unlike stamps, however, ticker tape was printed on the cheapest possible paper, immediately viewed, and then discarded. It was stale and useless by day's end, and had little further use (except perhaps to be thrown during a parade if it had not already been thrown in the trash). Although I estimated above that 100 million miles of ticker tape was printed between 1867 and 1994, finding ticker tape nowadays is difficult. I look at eBay.com about once a week, but 99 times out of 100 there is no genuine printed NYSE ticker tape for sale. In terms of scarcity, genuine NYSE printed ticker tape is like an exceedingly rare stamp. After 20+ years of collecting, I have managed to amass a collection consisting of exactly one piece of NYSE ticker tape. Can you call it a collection if you have only one piece?

    It took some time for me to realize that printed NYSE ticker tape is so rare that being a collector of it is a futile hobby. So futile, in fact, that demand for ticker tape from the general public is negligibly low. Low demand means, in turn, that you might buy a foot of unremarkable NYSE printed ticker tape for $20—if you can find it. In this regard, unremarkable NYSE printed ticker tape is unlike an exceedingly rare stamp: it can be both exceedingly rare and inexpensive because the demand is so low. (There are exceptions, like the $5,000 ticker tape from the crash of 1929 mentioned above, but that is remarkable tape, not unremarkable tape.) Given the futility, I gave up collecting ticker tape, and chose instead to collect ticker tape images. Now I have a collection! A byproduct of my collection and my interest is that I often end up helping the few ticker tape owners out there who do exist (and who, like me, often also have amassed a one-piece collection).

    Let me add that I find ticker tape fragments interesting because even the shortest snippet is a vignette that tells a story about that day's trade. Oftentimes, that piece of tape was set aside for a reason. Maybe it was an important day in financial history (e.g., the October 29, 1929 snippets), an unusually busy day in the market (e.g., the March 9, 1961 snippet), or a personal visit to the NYSE (April 15, 1965 snippet). Alternatively, maybe it was incorporated into something else (e.g., the pin/ash trays and jewelry box from 1967 and 1968), or the ticker tape parade envelopes from the 1960s. I guess the same is true of stamped envelopes or cards that were mailed to someone, though it's not necessarily true of unused stamps.

  • Let us now turn to Herman Herst Jr., the famous stamp dealer/collector, author, etc. He was born on March 15, 1909. So, he was only 25 years old when he fabricated and sold the envelopes shown below. It was 1934 and he was working in the bond department of Lebenthal & Co. As far as I can tell, Lebenthal still exists at the same address, 120 Broadway, NY, just one block from the NYSE. Note also that 120 Broadway backs onto Nassau Street, where Herst dealt stamps in the 1930s and 1940s. Herst died January 31, 1999, aged 89.

    The commemorative philatelic covers displayed below have stock ticker tape pasted onto them. They were constructed and then mailed as we see them on the afternoon of Monday October 29, 1934. So, they are at least that old. They mark five years since Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. I think that each item was made up by Herst personally (typed, ticker tape pasted, stamped with the company name, etc.) and I believe that they were mailed personally by him at Wall Street Station Post Office near his office.

    Given the different forms of address (typed, stamped, handwritten), I think Herst used stamped self-addressed envelopes sent in by collectors. (Thank you to Olaf Rappe for this observation.)

    Let me describe what the various stock ticker symbols represent on these pasted tape snippets. It is, however, somewhat of a moot point, because they are almost certainly fabrications. In fact, these are the earliest fabrications I have seen. Herman Herst is playing a prank on us from the grave. (I do wonder whether Herst was trying to create a new collectable genre, with his prank ticker tape.) As far as I can tell, Herst's prank remained hidden for 88 years, from 1934 to 2022, as I will explain.

    Note that Herst could use no more than about 10-12 characters to write a message, but he often used half that number. It's difficult to say much in so few characters. So, his pranks are pranks in only two dimensions: they are not what they purport to be (i.e., they are not the natural product of NYSE trading); and, they contain hidden messages.

    The ticker symbols appearing: ECT is Electric Storage Battery Corp., YS is Youngstown Sheet and Tube Corp., WU is Western Union, TEL is Telautograph*, CK is Collins and Aikman, BO is Baltimore and Ohio RR, ND is National Dairy Products Corp. (now under Kraft), WA is Wabash RR, CE is Chicago and Eastern Illinois RR, BR is BF Goodrich. CO is the Chesapeake and Ohio RR. To the best of my knowledge, however, the other symbols on these tapes (OLD, EGR, APH, EX, LS, FF, EE, AI, ASE) do not correspond to any actual stocks trading in 1929 or 1934, though some of these symbols were used later by the NYSE.

    *The Telautograph was invented in 1888. It was the first machine that allowed a picture/signature/handwriting to be transmitted via electrical signals to a stationary sheet of paper. It was, in essence, an early fax machine.

    Daniel Schibley, an amateur philatelist in the U.S., showed me the WU TEL EGR APH envelope in October of 2022. He pointed out that the last three symbols spell TELEGRAPH when combined, and he asked me about it. Up to that point I had seen the ECT OLD WA YS cover (courtesy of Olaf Rappe in 2021) and the CK BO ND CO cover, and I had not noticed the pattern or realized that Herst was playing a joke on us. For one full year prior, I had puzzled over the prints I had seen. They showed phantom ticker symbols alongside ticker symbols that purported to be from October 28, 1929, as follows.

    WU TELEGRAPH is Western Union Telegraph (note, however, that the Trans-Lux Directory mentioned above lists Western Union simply as W: UEL–ZP). I suspect that ECT OLD WA YS is PRO T [ECT OLD WAYS] or CO NN [ECT OLD WAYS]. I see now that CK BO ND CO is STO [CK BOND CO] T TON. There is also CO EXCELS (where CO is for Chesapeake and Ohio RR, and the letter is addressed to Laverne Peake**), and there are envelopes with snippets of COFFEE GRAIN & BASE METALS, each of which is traded on futures markets: coffee, grain, and base metals.

    **At first, I thought Mr. Peake was a fantasy created as a joke by Herst (i.e., that the Chesapeake RR prompted Herst to invent Mr. Peake). If Herst had mailed it to fake person, however, just to get it returned to him, then I would expect it to be stamped as "return to sender," which it is not. U.S. census records do indicate a man named Laverne Peake living in Phelps NY in 1940. According to the rear, Herst had this envelope in his hands 50 years later. Was he signing it for a collector who brought it in to him? I suspect that Herst's prank envelopes were all triggered by Mr. Peake's request for a commemorative envelope (with Herst noticing that he could use ticker tape to play with words using Peake's name).

    Does any reader have a Herman Herst Jr prank ticker tape envelope from 1934 not pictured here? If so, please contact me: timcrack@alum.mit.edu. I am happy to help decode it. Your snippet of ticker tape might come from just before of just after one of the ones pictured here, and together they might help to explain each other.

  • This web page is mostly about pinpointing dates on ticker tape. So, what date were Herst's tape snippets produced? They must have been produced on or before the Post Office date stamp of October 29, 1934. Given their uniformity of appearance, I am going to assume that these ticker tapes were all printed on the same day. There is only one day before 1935 that CK and ND on the Hicks envelope could have traded at these prices. It is Monday October 28, 1929, the day before Black Tuesday. The price range for ECT and YS also admits October 28, 1929 (the only other candidate is March 20, 1929, seven months earlier). However, neither WU nor TEL are near the prices given on the Eisenstein envelope during 1929 or 1934. As far as I can tell, the other ticker symbols on these snippets of ticker tape are not genuine, and the order in which they appear is certainly no coincidence. So, the tapes are not the natural outcome of any NYSE stock trading process that I have ever seen; they are almost certainly a fabrication. Note also that the Miller and Peake envelopes (and also the Mosher and Schauffler envelopes) contain the same symbols and prices as each other. This is a case of one ticker machine being fed the same data twice. If it were instead two ticker machines receiving the same market feed it is very unlikely that Herst would have found matching pieces among the lengths of tape in the ticker's waste basket.

    I suspect that Herst used some sort of test circuit to print these tapes, using some actual stock prices from October 28, 1929, but also using made-up symbols that helped him spell out words, as a prank. These are not closing prices from October 28, 1929. So, either he just chose random prices between the historical high and low of that day, but after the fact in 1934, or he printed them during the day on October 28, 1929 and kept them for five years.

    I have concluded that these ticker tapes were most likely printed in 1934, because although Herst was originally from New York, he was still a university student in Oregon in 1929. He completed a bachelor's (international law) at Reed College and a master's (journalism) at Univ. of Oregon. He did not return to New York until 1932. He worked, in quick succession, first at the NYT then the Star Ledger in NJ, before jumping to the Bond Department at Lebenthal & Co. in 1932. (Thank you to Daniel Schibley for this 1932 observation.) It seems unlikely that Herst had operator access to not only a stock ticker but some sort of test circuit for printing whatever he wanted until he was at Lebenthal, three years after the 1929 crash. He may have printed them out during a slow Saturday session, on Saturday October 27, 1934, or during his lunch break on Monday October 29, 1934 (activity tends to slow on Wall Street at lunch time), before mailing them on the Monday afternoon. Also, the self-addressed envelopes were likely recent arrivals on his desk, and the Peake-Chesapeake connection could not have been anticipated five years in advance. Thus suggesting a similarly recent fabrication.

    I am sure that many people kept copies of the WSJ listing prices from October 28, 1929, which show the Open, High, Low and Last prices (indeed, I am looking at online copies of that day's WSJ, NYT and Barron's as I write this). Such a copy was likely consulted by Herst in October 1934 to construct these tapes. He likely figured that to fool people, he'd need the genuine ticker symbols to match up with genuine prices, but he could use any price he wished for the phantom symbols.

    Herst was the sort of person who would jump on an opportunity. For example, I read a story of him mailing letters to fabricated addresses in Tokyo Japan as soon as he heard about the Pearl Harbor bombing, and again to Berlin Germany when war was declared on Germany, just so that he could get interestingly franked envelopes when they were subsequently returned to him as undeliverable. So, he is definitely someone who would jump on the five-year anniversary of the "crash of 1929" to market these items. Note also that someone (Herst?) has written in pencil on the Hicks envelope (BO ND) tape that it is from October 29, 1934. So, he may have printed them in the morning, using historical prices, and mailed them in the afternoon.

    Note that the additional fabricated ticker symbols would not draw much attention for four reasons: First, the purchasers were likely stamp collectors, and not stock market experts who would notice the fabrication. Second, like today, there were hundreds of NYSE stocks that the lay person has never heard of. So, these extra symbols would be assumed by the buyer to be among those names (just look at the names in the WSJ today, or those in the Trans-Lux Directory, above). Third, unlike today, ticker symbols were not commonly used by lay persons in the 1920s and 1930s. Ticker symbols were not even reported in the WSJ, NYT, or Barron's at the time. Instead, these newspapers printed only abbreviated company names alongside prices. Finally, ticker symbols were not necessarily unique in the 1920s and 1930s. That is, different exchanges used slightly different symbols for the same stock. The bottom line is that fabricated symbols would not draw attention to themselves in Herst's context.

    For completeness, note that I see that the NY City postage was only two pennies, whereas the other letters required three pennies. Note also that Herst's tape is the narrow 3/4"-wide tape as compared with the 1"-wide tape seen in most of the envelopes below from the late 1960s.

    Finally, before looking at Herst's envelopes, note that the return address on Herst's envelopes is 200 West 70th Street, on the Upper West Side. That apartment building was built in 1926 and is shown below. It is coming up to 100 years old, but must have been near new when Herst moved in. It is about five and a half miles north of the NYSE (and Herst's office) as the crow flies.
    

  • PROT[ECT OLD WAYS] or CONN[ECT OLD WAYS] (Does anyone have a better interpretation/suggestion, based perhaps on ECT being a battery company? Was he saying that storage batteries were an old way of getting electricity at that time?). Image belongs to Olaf Rappe.
    
  • Rear of above envelope. Note that it was not sealed. The gum is unused. With no contents, there was no reason to seal it. The flap was tucked inside, and Herst's stamp applied (which would have been obscured if sealed). Also, the envelope itself was the important thing here, rather than any contents. So, sealing it would invite opening, which would damage it. Images belong to Olaf Rappe.
    
  • [WU TELEGRAPH], where WU is Western Union. Image belongs to Daniel Schibley.
    
  • [...APH CO EXCELS] Continues from the previous one, where CO is Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. He is saying that this railway company excels! I suspect it is their stock that excels (financial stock that is, not rolling stock). Image belongs to Walter Anderson.
    
  • [CO EXCELS], where CO is Chesapeake and Ohio Railway; note it is addressed to Peake, who appears in census records. The rear of envelope shows that unlike the Bleyer envelope, this one has been sealed and slit open. Perhaps it originally had contents for Mr. Peake; maybe the prank was revealed to him.
    
  • STO[CK BOND CO]TTON. With rear. Image belongs to Walter Anderson.
    
  • BO[ND COTTON] Continues from the previous. With rear. Image belongs to Walter Anderson.
    
  • [COTTON]C Continues from and overlaps with the previous. With rear. This may be COTTON COFFEE. Image belongs to Walter Anderson.
    
  • Too faded to read; I have a request out to the owner. I suggested he shine UV light on it to read the old ink (but so far I have not gotten a response to my email). Walter Anderson pointed out to me that Steven J. Rod made this YouTube video in 2021 in which, at around the 6:30 to 7:00 mark, he discusses these envelopes and shows the Hicks envelope, above. Mr. Rod says that "Pat" Herst (his nickname) made these envelopes while still a "runner" for Lebenthal, before entering the stamp business in 1935. (A runner is a junior employee who runs from place to place for others, often carrying orders or trade confirmations.) Mr. Rod says that Herst made 10 of these envelopes. If there are exactly 10 of these, then I am going to claim that this faded one must say ST O CK or STO CK on it, because I have images for 10 envelopes here and I see the tail end of STOCK on the Hicks envelope. So, STOCK must be on one of them, but that leaves only this one.
    
  • C[OFFEE GRAI]N...
    
  • ...GR[AIN & BASE] METALS, continues from previous. Coffee, grain, and base metals (i.e., a metal, like copper, that is not a precious metal) are three products traded on the U.S. futures markets!
    
  
  
• Commemorative NY Ticker Tape Parade Envelopes
  • During September 2021, I was contacted by Douglas Deacon in the U.S. to examine his commemorative envelopes decorated with ticker tape from NY ticker tape parades (the May 1963 and January 1969 examples below). This was my first time seeing envelopes decorated with ticker tape. He also sent me one of the Herst examples above, though this one is owned by someone else. I then also found the Apollo 11 example online, which was described as having been sold for $800.
  • If a parade takes place during the business day (and I think they did), then the ticker tape from the parade is unlikely to be from that day, and is likely to have been set aside in advance. I was able to date both the May 1963 and January 1969 examples as being from two days prior to their respective parades, which makes sense, and is exactly what I would have expected.
  • The ticker tape from the August 13, 1969 Apollo 11 parade, however, is dated to either April 22, 1969 or April 25, 1969 (it can be no other date, but I could not pinpoint the exact day). These dates are four months prior to the parade. I have two competing hypotheses. First, higher up on this page, I gave the quote from 1971: "Paper ticker tape is so rare these days that New York City has had to ask brokers with such tickers to hoard the tape so that there will be enough on hand to make a decent showing when a Broadway parade is held." There were no parades between January and August of 1969. So, this ticker tape could easily have been genuinely hoarded for four months, and thrown in August. Second, perhaps the envelope is a fabrication, having had the tape stuck on it four months earlier, getting date stamped on the day in question. If so, then it is a misrepresentation, because the tape was not thrown on the day in question. My opinion is that the Apollo 11 item is genuine, because of the quote given above, and because of the absence of any parades between January and August of 1969.
  • Monday May 20, 1963 (for Gordon Cooper Mercury 9 NY Parade on Wednesday May 22, 1963):
    
  • Wednesday January 8, 1969 (for Frank Borman, James A. Lovell, and William A. Anders Apollo 8 NY Parade on Friday January 10, 1969):
    
  • Either April 22, 1969 or April 25, 1969 (for Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins Apollo 11 NY Parade on August 13, 1969)
    

A reader was told in 2021 that this item is stock exchange ticker tape from the 1920s and he asked me about it. No, it is not a stock exchange item. After 18 months of asking people about it, a New Zealand–based Tibetan head monk currently in India has told me that it is Tibetan script of the mantra of compassion—om mani padme hum. It would have been rolled up tightly inside a prayer wheel. I think it was block printed by hand. After some searching, I found a very similar looking item for sale, including both prayer wheel and script, dated to 1800. I suspect that this is of a similar vintage. I left the images here in case anyone else has something similar and is similarly confused.

• Crack, Timothy Falcon, 2022, Foundations for Scientific Investing: Capital Markets Intuition and Critical Thinking Skills, 12th Edition. Latest edition available for purchase here.
• DTC (The Depository Trust Company), 1984, Annual Report. Available here.
• Loeb, Thomas F., 1983, "Trading Cost: The Critical Link between Investment Information and Results," Financial Analysts Journal, May-Jun, Vol. 39 No. 3, pp. 39–44. Available here; Library access may be needed.
• Michayluk, David, 2008, "The Rise and Fall of Single-Letter Ticker Symbols," Business History Vol. 50 No. 3, (May), pp368–385. Available here.
• NYSE, 2015, NYSE Symbology, Ver 1.0c, March 23, 2015. 14pp. Available here.
• NYSE, 2022, "Daily U.S Equity Matched Volumes (millions, includes CS2)," Available here.
• Saad, Lydia, 2020, "What Percentage of Americans Owns Stock?," Gallup poll. Available here.
• Perlo, Victor, 1958, "People's Capitalism" and Stock-Ownership, The American Economic Review, Vol. 48 No. 3 (June), pp. 333–347. Available here; Library access may be needed.
• TBT, 1998, "Tale of the Tape: A Ticker's Story," Tampa Bay Times, Jan. 25, 1998. Available here.

Last Updated: August 8, 2023