Women as Gamblers

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 538, 15 December 1928, Page 26

Women as Gamblers

The Invasion of Wall Street by American Women. SHE sound of the ticker is a siren song in the ears of American They have entered the stock market in such thousands that some conservative financiers attribute the present strange antics of the daily sessions to their inexperienced operation. When call money rises from 7 to 9 per cent., without having any influence on speculation, bankers throw up their hands in dismay. As one leading Wall Street banker remarked in conversation: “The women are conducting finance in an imaginary world of their own. Many of them know nothing of the stocks they buy. They all expect the market to rise, and think their brokers are very unkind when a stock declines. The market, once the preserve of big business, is now the playground of women.” Down-town brokers’ offices still remain exclusively masculine. But some enterprising brokers, realising that a fortune lay ready to hand, have opened up offices in the great hotels of Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue.

These offices, luxuriously furnished, have board rooms specially set aside for women customers. Enriched with the stock gossip of the bridge and dinner-table, hundreds of women crowd these rooms. Everyone is in a speculative fever.

Enter a room where men are watching a board as intently as a cat a mouse, and a death-like stillness reigns. What story (asks the “Daily Mail”) lies behind these poker faces? You cannot guess. Someone on your right has just made a few thousands: someone on your left has lost the same amount. But which is winner and which loser lies hidden by a mask. Enter an up-town office, where women are plunging in the market, and you will find the room is crowded. At first only the regulars, ■who spend all the week in front of the board, are at hand. They have their favourite seats, like those elderly gentlemen in a London club. Each carries a newspaper turned back to the financial page, marked at various items. They nod to the young manager, chosen because he has a way with women and will not be bored should they prove inexperienced and tearful. The haze of smoke from many cigarettes mingles

with the soft Tights from tastefully designed electric globes. You hear the jargon of the market “My dear, how is your pup to-dav Is the market soft or strong? And the reply: “It’s growing up to be a dog.” Or, if fate has overtaken the stock, the speaker smile’ wanly: “Someone strangled it F birth.” But for the most part the room is quiet, punctured by an occasional “Oh” or “Ah” as the ticker revealsome unexpected change of fortuniThe married woman has brought a new problem to the market. Does her husband know that she is speculating? One married woman in conversation explained that she was first attracted to the market as a cure for nerves. “I could not gel away from myself, and 1 sought the market as a distraction,” she sa.n “My husband is bitterly opposed w my new activities. I don’t need the money, but 1 love the excitement. She mentioned one of her friendwho had inherited £20.000. and hclever stock manipulation had triples it. Sometimes the young manager will hear a sad “What will Harry saybut as a rule women take their losses manfully, and often, if it is their firexperience of the Exchange, they cease speculating.

Women are, of course, always o the bull side of the market. N°t«w in ten will operate on the down si ’• They know by intuition that instock is “going up.” They are ■ greatest advertisers that the mar has ever known. Turning from their women tomers to the brokers themself we find a new conception of 11 ” among those to whom the J’° 1 take their losses manfully, and o • large fortunes. Since the visit or ill-fated financier Loewenstein his airplane as means of tral 'yF» e the plane has become the cat -j de luxe of Wall Streets favoured sous.