Reuters Stockmaster

For many decades, dealers have been accustomed to being surrounded by a myriad of screens with limitless price data and information on which they can rely when dealing and making quotes. It wasn’t always so. In the 1960s, there were no screens and no live price data.

How, in those days, did a dealer keep up with the market to evaluate his position, or when called upon to make a price? By following ticker tape for news and talking to other dealers to check their prices. There was, out of necessity, much more contact and camaraderie between competing dealers then, as they needed each other. Then, around 1968, came the first piece of equipment for the information revolution in dealing rooms – the Reuters Ultronic Stockmaster.

This piece of advanced technology created a certain excitement when it first arrived in the Sharps Pixley dealing room. We had one to share with the whole room and it sat alongside the recently introduced departmental electronic calculator which was developed around the same time, replacing the mechanically sophisticated but cumbersome pinwheel calculator. The Stockmaster was used in bullion solely for following the silver price and was only of any use in the afternoon when Comex in New York, from which live data was available, was open. It provided an aid to keeping up with the market and a source of information from where transactions could be covered. And naturally, once one dealing room had one, we all had to have one in order to maintain the edge and keep competitive. It was this urge to compete that drove the subsequent revolution in dealing room information technology that the introduction of the Stockmaster heralded.

Its operation was simple. Input the four-letter Comex code for the required commodity and maturity in the first four columns by depressing the stiff clunky mechanical keys. Electronic touch buttons were almost as far away as touch screens then. Finally, depress the key for the price you want, i.e., bid, last opening, etc., and then wait. Three red digits would appear in the bug-eyed looking domes at the top. There were no decimal points to help, so which three figures of the price did the numbers represent?

How things have changed. The Stockmaster didn’t last long. It was overtaken by the Reuters Monitor System introduced around 1972, but for us, only for exchange-traded silver transactions. By the time Comex gold trading commenced in January 1975 and gold prices appeared on the Reuters Monitor, the Stockmaster was long consigned to history.

With thanks to Alan Baker, ex Rothschilds, Sharps Pixley, Deutsche Bank and former Chairman of the LBMA