The Bulls of Baghdad
Trader Monthly/Trader Daily
By Phillip Robertson
In a nation plagued by bombings, kidnappings and political strife, a trading floor struggles to survive. Come spend a day in Baghdad’s financial trenches: the Iraq Stock Exchange.
It’s 9:59 on a Monday morning, the calm before the sandstorm at the Iraq Stock Exchange, mere seconds before the market opens for its twice-weekly session. In a spartan, sweltering room, a hundred or so traders stand on a vast stained lagoon of gray carpet. Surrounding them, a sea of spectators and brokers crowd up against a low barrier like bettors at a racetrack. Each of them cranes forward to get a better look at the numbers; several men wield binoculars to assist them in the task.
Few of the men in the room are clean-shaven — most have mustaches — but there are no flowing beards to be found. (If there are, indeed, no atheists in foxholes, there are also no fundamentalists on trading floors.) The large room smells of cigarettes, bad cologne and sweat. There are no Americans in sight.
On the wall hangs a plastic battery-operated clock, its second hand sweeping around the face. When that hand hits the top, the opening bell will sound, bringing to life another 150-minute session of perhaps the world’s most unlikely stock market, a trading floor whose hopeful cacophony may offer the closest thing this ravaged nation has for a soundtrack of capitalism. The hand reaches its apex, and another day of the Iraq Stock Exchange is heralded by the sound of . . . a doorbell.
A cheap doorbell wired to a grimy switch on a white wall, its static buzz is both familiar and weirdly appropriate. If Baghdad’s nascent stock exchange has a symbol, this is it. The Iraqi market — like Iraq itself — may be long on hope, but it’s short on production values.
The roomful of traders at the Iraq Stock Exchange don’t seem to care. At the sound of the bell, they leap into action just like traders the world over — yelling into their phones, scribbling down trades, pulling at their hair. In a roped-off section to the side of them, a crowd of investors and brokers, cellphones pressed to ears, begin shouting to the men on the floor. They shout at the stock prices. They shout at God. As many as four traders seem to work the same patch of carpet at the same time.
There are, however, no computers on the floor. Every aspect of this lunacy must be tracked by hand. To handle the job are dry-erase boards, upon which traders scrawl with multicolored markers. Several traders huddle around each, erasing buy and sell prices and madly scribbling new ones in their place. Somehow, they manage it all without throwing punches — perhaps more than one would expect from the boys of the NYMEX, were they to try the same.
Click here for the rest of the article
Trader Monthly/Trader Daily
By Phillip Robertson
In a nation plagued by bombings, kidnappings and political strife, a trading floor struggles to survive. Come spend a day in Baghdad’s financial trenches: the Iraq Stock Exchange.
It’s 9:59 on a Monday morning, the calm before the sandstorm at the Iraq Stock Exchange, mere seconds before the market opens for its twice-weekly session. In a spartan, sweltering room, a hundred or so traders stand on a vast stained lagoon of gray carpet. Surrounding them, a sea of spectators and brokers crowd up against a low barrier like bettors at a racetrack. Each of them cranes forward to get a better look at the numbers; several men wield binoculars to assist them in the task.
Few of the men in the room are clean-shaven — most have mustaches — but there are no flowing beards to be found. (If there are, indeed, no atheists in foxholes, there are also no fundamentalists on trading floors.) The large room smells of cigarettes, bad cologne and sweat. There are no Americans in sight.
On the wall hangs a plastic battery-operated clock, its second hand sweeping around the face. When that hand hits the top, the opening bell will sound, bringing to life another 150-minute session of perhaps the world’s most unlikely stock market, a trading floor whose hopeful cacophony may offer the closest thing this ravaged nation has for a soundtrack of capitalism. The hand reaches its apex, and another day of the Iraq Stock Exchange is heralded by the sound of . . . a doorbell.
A cheap doorbell wired to a grimy switch on a white wall, its static buzz is both familiar and weirdly appropriate. If Baghdad’s nascent stock exchange has a symbol, this is it. The Iraqi market — like Iraq itself — may be long on hope, but it’s short on production values.
The roomful of traders at the Iraq Stock Exchange don’t seem to care. At the sound of the bell, they leap into action just like traders the world over — yelling into their phones, scribbling down trades, pulling at their hair. In a roped-off section to the side of them, a crowd of investors and brokers, cellphones pressed to ears, begin shouting to the men on the floor. They shout at the stock prices. They shout at God. As many as four traders seem to work the same patch of carpet at the same time.
There are, however, no computers on the floor. Every aspect of this lunacy must be tracked by hand. To handle the job are dry-erase boards, upon which traders scrawl with multicolored markers. Several traders huddle around each, erasing buy and sell prices and madly scribbling new ones in their place. Somehow, they manage it all without throwing punches — perhaps more than one would expect from the boys of the NYMEX, were they to try the same.
Click here for the rest of the article
posted by Kevin at 9:57 PM
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