 Assessing
Wall Street scandals | When you think about Wall
Street, what sort of images come to mind? Do you imagine upscale financial centers
in which genteel men and women dressed in pinstripe suits conduct commerce with
a common purpose -- to serve the greater capitalistic good? Or do you think of
urban blight, of grimy, littered back streets peopled by gangs, pimps and prostitutes
who more openly exemplify the moral code that everyone is out for themselves?
Or is it some combination of these two images? Wall
Street may appear to be a place where business is conducted properly, where the
interests of investors are always top of mind. But there are a lot of shenanigans
going on behind the scenes that we can glimpse in the financial press. And then,
after reading about them, we either feel the need to take a long shower or the
desire to inhale toxic tobacco fumes while drowning our sorrows at the local pub.
OK, maybe we all don't have the same reactions. But we should,
from time to time, assess the crime in our streets, whether it's the hush-hush
white-collar variety of Wall Street or the whatcha-gonna-do-when-they-come-for-you-bad-boy,
blue-collar, "Cops" version. And, we might try to answer the question,
"How bad is this crime from an ethical perspective?" Specialists
in the NYSE
Let's take a look at the allegations of improper trading
among specialists at the New York Stock Exchange. First, some background about
what these traders actually do. Specialists are market makers,
middlemen actually, who are assigned particular stocks in which they trade. Their
purpose is to keep an orderly flow of prices on the trading floor by matching
up buyers and sellers. You can see them on CNBC, yelling and screaming at the
tops of their lungs. You thought that was chaos? No, that was order. They
must make trades to facilitate these transactions, and they make money in the
process. Specialists profit on the spread between the bid and ask price of a security,
which is the difference between its purchase and sale prices. They also get money
from dividends and interest earned on the securities they own, and they realize
capital appreciation from securities they sell. These are
the lawful ways that specialists can make money to fulfill their profound responsibility:
They must buy and sell securities in all market conditions, and they bear the
risk of loss from unexpected price drops. A textbook on investments describes
their role this way: "These market makers guarantee to buy and sell at the
prices they announce. Thus, an investor knows what the securities are worth at
any given time and is assured that there is a place to sell current security holdings
or to purchase additional securities. For this service, the market makers must
be compensated. ..." Saintly specialists
In fact, it is in the specialist's job description to trade against the grain
of the market, buying when stocks are getting trashed and selling as they scale
new heights, risking their capital in the process, all for the altruistic purpose
of putting their brokerage customers (and ultimately you) first, above their own
interests. In other words, their actions are ostensibly selfless.
These specialists should be canonized as stock market saints. Except
that they're human beings who succumb to temptation. Being privy to the imminent
direction of stocks in the market puts them in a unique position to exploit that
information for selfish gain. And recently they've gotten into trouble for doing
just that -- more about that in a minute. Superfluous
specialists
First, let's explore their role in the scheme of things.
Are they necessary parts of the market machinery or are they an encumbrance, a
wrench in the works? "NYSE floor traders can be replaced
by a computer -- literally," says Gary Weiss in his book, "Wall Street
Versus America: The Rampant Greed and Dishonesty that Imperil Your Investments." | 
