I could see papers with hand-scrawled numbers being passed through the crowd, and I could hear the din of people shouting numbers back and forth. Finally, Eric's daughter wrote down the information for the first trade on a sheet of paper and handed it to a trader. The first trade was made. That's when it struck me. The exchange has all this technology, which it uses to track the results of trades and make sure things move smoothly.
Traders use technology to see information on particular stocks and on the market as a whole.
Everything depends on individuals deciding what they want to buy and sell. In some ways, that's a little scary, but in other ways, it's comforting. There's a little geek in all of us, and we all love to be wowed by great new technology. But it's also good to remember that after all the technology is stripped away, the work still comes down to people.