Day JFK Died We Traded Through Tears as NYSE Shut
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Fifty years ago today, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Michael Robbins heard a murmur. It started at the booth of a Texas firm, Eppler, Guerin & Turner Inc., and got louder, until the 30-year-old trader realized what it was: the sound of a selloff.
In the order room of Thomson McKinnon Securities Inc., a 21-year-old clerk named Arthur Cashin Jr. answered the ringing phone. It was a broker on the exchange floor asking if any news had come over the wire. He’d heard a rumor that something may have happened to the U.S. president. Cashin told him no.