ABSTRACT
The securities markets were experiencing some revolutionary changes even as the Enron scandals were unfolding. The attack by Eliot Spitzer on Richard Grasso’s retirement package would also have a dramatic effect on one of the nation’s most venerable institutions, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In 1836, NYSE prohibited its members from trading in the curb market. Actually, the curb market posed no substantial threat to the exchange until the Civil War touched off a frenzy of speculation. NYSE prohibited its members from communicating with anyone connected to a notorious bucket shop operation that was NYSE’s largest competitor, the Consolidated Exchange. Institutional traders, such as mutual funds and union pension funds, began supplanting the individual retail investor in the securities markets after World War II. The specialists and floor brokers on NYSE have been the center of a number of scandals in recent years.
