Yo Pit Crazies,

This whole Wiretap thing has me reminiscing about the old days when I traded on a floor with paper tickets. 

Wiretap has nothing to do with paper tickets, but traders have run pools of capital since the Egyptians traded wheat futures. What has me thinking about this is the nature of flow in Wiretap and zero-day options, which is more of the buy nature. 

The guys that ripped the buy sides off their tickets were the opposite. 

Let me explain.

I could not find a picture of an old trading ticket. 

The buy sides were black for calls and brown for puts. The sell sides were red for calls and blue for puts. 

Each ticket side had carbon copies to make three trades per side. 

Once I made a trade, I would rip off the top copy, give that to the broker or the book, and keep a hard imprinted card like the old credit card slips we used before the internet. If the floppy tickets were off the card, the trade ticket was useless. This is where the ticket rippers came in.

A stock would get active, and these guys backed by outside money would come in and rip all the buy sides off their tickets. The black and brown sides got tossed on the floor. 

That was their announcement that they were there to help with one side of the trade only, and that was the sell side.

How did they know to come down and participate in my high volatility trading heaven? 

They had market screens that told them where the opportunities were, and that was the only place they would go. 

They went where the opportunity already existed.

Option Pit is building scanners now to go to where the opportunity will be. 

And our students don’t have to rip any tickets to announce their arrival.

Wiretap is just one example of that.

To Your Trading Success,

AG