Friday, November 16, 2007

Editorial on the TSE Traders Archive

The TSE Traders Archive has now been running with daily postings since late July and we have had a good deal of praise from all over the country. I would like to thank a number of people for their assistance. Simone Lau, a U.S trader on my desk, who is responsible for the actual creation, day-to-day posts, scanning and design of the Archive. In other words, the hard part. John Manna has been an invaluable contributor. Fred Ketchen, at 70, can still remember a lot of the names from some of the oldest pictures. I would like to particularly thank the individuals that sent me their pictures or profiles.

The reason why Simone and I started the Archive was because we were seeing the TSE Floor Trader’s history starting to disappear. People were losing touch with each other and even worse, people were passing away. Once we started the Archive, we have been constantly surprised to find out that many traders/post clerks/phone clerks and customer service staff don’t even have a picture of themselves on the Floors. Our intention, if we are successful, is to receive enough information/pictures/profiles and stories to publish something for everyone as a memento.

We have been in contact with lots of individuals and have been promised lots of information. It has been like pulling teeth. Promises are late in coming. Please share your information with us and the rest of the street. Mail your items to my address listed on the Archive (on the right panel) and we will return the originals to you.

I would also ask that you pass on the Archive link to your contacts. We know that there is a large population of traders that don’t even know about the site yet.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am so pleased to see that the great idea you had has turned into a wonderful powerful resource to people like myself and so many others with a significant part of their personal history revolving around the TSE Floors. In many ways this might be the only significant open record of the 'people of the floor' and their very important history. I am certainly doing everything in my limited power to contact everyone that I can because I KNOW how important it is for people, all of the people, from the 'floor' to find out about this event. I am in near shock with the news of how many good people, many of them friends, that have passed away since my last major contact in 1997 at the floor closing.

This could very easily be the LAST time many of us will see some of our old friends and fellow compatriots of the 'Floor Wars'. This site has been online since July, 07' I believe. I found out about it on Feb. 13th of 08'. I only happened upon the site, quite by chance, while doing some research on Don Bainbridge. If not for that I feel certain that I would not have heard about it and subsequently missed this amazing and wonderful opportunity. I have contacted about 40 people so far, this represents everyone I have been able to track down so far. If I had a contact list of some kind I would personally contact all of them! Something like this should definately be done. It's THAT important!

Nina Athena said...

Thank you for sharing such valuable and helpful information, tips and knowledge. This gives me more insights on this. I would love to see more updates from you.

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