After the cable was completed, price information could cross the Atlantic in a day. As a result, cotton shipments began to more closely match the fluctuations in the market, and prices on the cotton market became less volatile. Before the undersea cable, it was harder to match supply with demand because the news that arrived in New York was already more than a week old — slower than the pace of events even in that era. Speeding up the news let traders react to the market better.
