Bang and tickle
NOT so much a Big Bang, more a touch of coitus interruptus. Some people enjoyed it, though. I know an investor who, in Mon- day morning's muddle, caused four simul- taneous calls to be made to four different dealers in a blue-chip drinks share. The lowest offer price and the highest bid price were 18 pence apart. My friend bought from the seller and sold to the bidder, in size, and that will keep the roof on his office all winter. Exciting times! At one point a gap two pounds wide appeared in the shares of Beecham, though I do not believe that anyone had the chance to drive through it. This was an outbreak of what the markets call 'big-figure trouble' — as experienced by foreign exchange dealers, who, when asked the sterling-dollar rate (which they anachronistically call 'cable'), will tell you what the last two of the four places of decimals are, but not the figures, such as $1.41, that should precede them. The computer trouble was put down by Sir Nicholas Goodison, the Stock Exchange's chairman, to the kind of curiosity that causes a zoo's visitors to gawp at new arrivals — not his choicest metaphor, with its implication that the Exchange knows best, and would be quite all right if the vulgar crowds would leave it alone. The vulgar crowds of international dealers might have second thoughts about the merits of joining his zoological society. He might fairly have said that the Reuter information screens, with their proven technology, often blink at the moment in the morning when everbody reaches the office and tunes in to see what is happen- ing. The gilt-edged market, with its inter- nal dealings handled over its own closed- circuit screen system, got to a smoother start — though, meeting the Government broker as he marched out of the Bank of England, top hat in hand, I was pleased to reflect that the market had not abandoned the most proven technology of all. That is wise. The survivors of Eddie Shah's launch of Today could tell the same story. An ICI director who called on them in their early days found them anxious: 'I asked them what was the matter, and they said: "It's our new plant. It doesn't work." ' The ICI man looked back over many years of crawling over newly-installed distillation columns, spanner in hand: 'I told them: "They don't, you know." '
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