I was going to put this in "general trading" but chose Order Execution because I thought it was more appropriate. Moderators feel free to move this around if you want. That pink sheet of card stock was from my first job in finance/trading at JP Morgan (Brown Co). We were one of the very first online discount brokerage firms. I worked on the equity and options desk as basically a data entry monkey. When I took the job I didn't even know what a CUSIP was. We had a two-minute execution guarantee. Yes you read that correctly: 2-minute execution guarantee. We sat on a desk as a team of six. We had a bank of four (very loud) dot-matrix printers behind us that would fire up initially for the first morning crossing session then go silent. At 9:30 it was like starting a tractor engine. The bell would ring and the printers would fire up and go crazy. All the opening orders were queued in the system and would start to print. We were only allowed to tear off one ticket at a time. These were actual client trades that were being printed... the printers were close enough we would just turn around in our chair and pull a ticket/tear it off. It was every options, short, pink sheet, odd-lot, or exception trade that came though the entire firm that would print off for the 6 of us to enter manually. We would pull the ticket then manually key into the client's account to first - see what the heck they were doing - (you have no idea how many clients would try to short to close a long position - or buy number of shares in dollars vs. # of shares, etc.) then we would check their buying power (BP) and permissions to make sure they could execute the trade. From there we would either call the client and tell them why they couldn't enter the trade or ask what they were trying to do: "Hi Mr. XYZ this is (name) from (broker) and you are on a recorded line, your trade instructions say short 500 IBM but you are long 500 IBM, did you mean sell to close not sell/short to open?" OR "Hi Mr. XYZ this is (name) from (broker) and you are on a recorded line, your trade instructions say to buy 3675 shares of MSFT. Microsoft is trading close to $36.75, did you mean buy 100 shares of MSFT? I can make that correction and enter that trade for you but could you first confirm the order type? I need to hear you say the full order instructions, for example: 'please buy 100shs MSFT at the market'." OR "Hi Mr. XYZ this is (name) from (broker) and you are on a recorded line, your trade instructions are to to sell 11 uncovered/naked (month, ticker, strike) calls. You don't have approval to sell naked options but you are long 1100 (ticker). Were you trying to sell covered calls? I can make that correction and enter that trade for you but could you first confirm the order type? I need to hear you say the full order instructions, for example: 'please sell to open, 11 covered (month, ticker, strike) calls and at what price'." If we had a Series 7 we could call the client - the new guys who were still studying would have to hand exceptions or client calls to a guy on the desk with a 7 or our manager. This is why we could only take one ticket at a time - if we had to call the client it could take 5-10 minutes and we couldn't risk sitting on a second ticket and missing our 2-minute window. All short sales we had to call downstairs to stock loan to verify the shares. We had two guys down there that would work an excel spreadsheet all day. We'd call down and say "I need 500 XXX" they would reply yes, no or put us on hold to call outside and see if we could borrow the shares... If we had a locate we'd enter the trade, if we didn't have the shares we'd call the client and tell them it was a bad trade, no borrow, etc. Each ticket would then be manually entered into the system. We'd then write the confirmation number on the pink sheet, our initials and the name of the guy in stock loan we spoke to who approved the borrow. Each of us had an old-school timestamp machine at our desks - we'd sign the ticket and write the order confirmation number, timestamp the ticket (to verify that we did it within our 2-minute window), put it in the pile to be archived and go pull another ticket... Amazing how far we've come in 10 years...
Out of curiosity, when technology changed (dramatically improved)...did you lose your job or did they just train you to do a different job involving the new changing technology being used in the markets.
I am amazed at the attention to details : but 3675 quantity or buy at $36.75 price for instance. I guess after employees picked up the orders to be executed from the pink sheet, they had to check details so as to make sure they executed exactly what the customer wanted.
JPM sold Brown Co. to E*Trade. We were all let go. E*Trade was light-years ahead of Brown in terms of technology and really only bought Brown Co. for the clients, not the employees. I left JPM/E*Trade and went to work at another bank packaging mortgages and creating synthetic securities... We had to enter every order exactly as the client specified on the instructions. If you think about it - 100shs @ $36 is $3,600 vs. 3675 shares at $36 is $132k. Usually these mistakes were blatant and very obvious because the client wouldn't have the cash/buying power in their account to place a $130k trade... It usually was pretty clear what their intention was. Our performance-based bonus very much took into account "screw ups" and if we mis-entered a client's order we'd be called out for it and ding'd on our bonus.
Or working the Friday after Thanksgiving when you get to the close and you've only processed 4 tickets all session! I enjoyed the fast/busy times much more than the slow ones.