Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street

by John Brooks

Probably the most scholarly and detailed report on who did the selling that caused the crisis was furnished by the New York Stock Exchange itself, which began sending elaborate questionnaires to its individual and corporate members immediately after the commotion was over. The Exchange calculated that during the three days of the crisis rural areas of the country were more active in the market than they customarily are; that women investors had sold two and a half times as much stock as men investors; that foreign investors were far more active than usual, accounting for 5.5 per cent of the total volume, and, on balance, were substantial sellers; and, most striking of all, that what the Exchange calls “public individuals”—individual investors, as opposed to institutional ones, which is to say people who would be described anywhere but on Wall Street as private individuals—played an astonishingly large role in the whole affair, accounting for an unprecedented 56.8 per cent of the total volume. Breaking down the public individuals into income categories, the Exchange calculated that those with family incomes of over twenty-five thousand dollars a year were the heaviest and most insistent sellers, while those with incomes under ten thousand dollars, after selling on Monday and early on Tuesday, bought so many shares on Thursday that they actually became net buyers over the three-day period. Furthermore, according to the Exchange’s calculations, about a million shares—or 3.5 p...