Trading Stock Market

Who are the people on the stock market trading floor – what are they doing – what are those hand signals?

I see these people yelling at someone up on a balcony somewhere, yelling into a phone, making funny hand signals to someone – there are bunches of people there – I just wonder how the whole thing works! Who are they yelling at – who is on the balcony? Who are they making the hand signals to? What do they mean? What are they trying to do?

You’re actually talking about commodities and futures trading pits. The New York Stock Exchange does have floor traders, but they don’t use hand signals.

The hand signals were developed as a method to communicate amidst the noise of the pit. Only one commodity trades in a particular pit location, so the hand signals simply indicate whether the trader is a buyer or seller, how much they’re looking to trade, and what price they would like to trade at.

The Eddie Murphy/Dan Akroyd movie “Trading Places” has a scene at the end that actually does a really good job explaining it all.

Trading Stock Market setups. Day Trading AMZN Oct 2