The City v. The Street

World's biggest securities market, with 10,000 issues traded, is the London Stock Exchange. For war "The House," as Londoners call its huge six-story building, has corrugated metal shutters on the windows, slabs of concrete over lavatory glass, skylights, pavements, etc. Inside, 30 seconds before the rest of London hears an air-raid siren's wail, a, special Klaxon stops the traders. They gather their books and scurry to their City offices, all less than half a mile away. Only red-and-blue liveried "waiters" (runners) are left on the echoing floor. So called because 18th-Century brokers did their trading in coffee houses, the waiters are A. R. P. wardens now.

The House has not been very busy since war began. Dealings are for cash only; short sales are virtually eliminated; volume is 12 to 15% of pre-war levels. In Shorters Court, the dingy yard where 400 yelling traders often moiled till 10 p.m., there is now no trading at all, for "Yankees" (U. S. securities) formerly traded there are all Government-held. Two fire engines block the narrow passageway to Shorters. Throgmorton Street, a sort of Curb exchange for oil and mining shares, is empty too. In the idle House, the brokers drill four nights a week for home defense; by day they play Spitfire pools. These pay off on the number of "Jerrys" brought down by R. A. F. each day. The proceeds buy new Spitfires. Last week Lord Beaverbrook, Minister for Aircraft Production, received payment for the Stock Exchange's first plane--a -L-5,000 check.

Despite restrictions, the House still functions as a market, and its quotations react quickly to good and bad war news. After the Low Countries and France went under, the London Financial Times's index of industrials collapsed to an eight-year low of 61. But the bombings of London, which send the brokers scurrying and are supposed to prelude the end of their world, have not fazed brokers or prices one whit. Last week, while the Stukas dived, the index had completed two months of climbing, was back at 79.

This astonishing performance was particularly noted in Wall Street. There, while fall weather turned brokers' minds to football pools, volume of trading on the New York Stock Exchange hit a 24-year low, and a seat was bought at the lowest price in 26 years. Stock prices, as they have for weeks, stayed at levels disproportionately low compared with current corporate earnings. Main reason: fear that Nazi bombers will make Britain surrender.

Watching the cheerful Londoners from their own sluggish exchange, many a Manhattan broker recalled that the City had often proved a better and an earlier prophet than the Street in the past. Some reflected that English brokers have sons and cousins in the R. A. F., may get firsthand information on the progress of the air war. A few, juggling figures, tried to prove that London's price rise meant the beginning of inflation.

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