25 old-school pranks that Wall Streeters used to pull on the trading floor
If you were being annoying, they'd duct tape you to a chair and throw you in an elevator and push all of the buttons.
Traders would ink or paint a newbie's phone receiver.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: Traders would ink or paint the phone receiver so that one's ear would turn black.
Traders would also put shaving cream on the telephone receiver.
Location: CBOT
The Prank: Traders would carefully place shaving cream in a telephone receiver so that when someone picked up the phone they would get an earful of shaving cream.
Apparently, some people would put laxatives in busy traders' drinks.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: One vet who spent 24 years on the floor said that they would put Ex-Lax in the soda of a busy futures broker. Yipes!
Commodities traders had a prank called "high tide" where they would leave large cups of water that would spill on the brokers moving to and from the pits.
Location: NYMEX
The Prank: One former commodities trader told us in the '80s they had a prank called "high tide" in the silver pits.
"In the chaotic busy days of trading we would take extra-large cups of water and stand them up on an upside down empty cup on the floor in the middle of a busy runway where brokers would briskly walk (nearly run) to the pits where they were trading. As they quickly ran by they would hit the cups with their feet and the water would gush up, smoking them. Everyone working in the silver pit would then yell 'high tide.'"
Years ago, traders would launch cups of water at one another from their spring-loaded jump seats.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: "The old-style trading posts had spring-loaded jump seats that the traders could pull down to sit and take a load off. Those days, they only traded 2 to 3 million shares a day, so there was plenty of downtime. The prank was to take a paper cup, fill it with water, and wedge it into the seat. The next sucker to pull the seat down launched this missile at himself — and got doused. Good clean (wet) fun!" the grandson of a NYSE trader told Business Insider.
If you tripped and fell at the NYSE, they'd make it look like a crime scene.
Location: NYSE
The prank: Back when the floor of the NYSE was super crowded, if a guy would fall down, other floor brokers and specialists would draw a chalk outline around him.
The NYMEX folks would tell a clerk to ask a broker where the market was for an expired contract.
Location: NYMEX
The Prank: After a contract expired, you would tell a clerk or even a broker to see where that market was on the contract that just expired.
A former clerk told us: "So for example we are trading May crude oil now. Whenever that expires you would tell the clerk to see where that market is. They would go ask and everyone would just make fun of them. It was so childish, but it was great."
They'd also tell the newbies to go find a "left-handed phone."
Location: NYMEX
The Prank: At the NYMEX, they would tell new workers to go and find a left-handed phone.
Apparently, some people fell for it ...
NYMEX traders would also tell the intern to find the keys to the clearinghouse.
Location: NYMEX
The Prank: A trader told us about a prank in which interns were directed to go find the keys to the clearinghouse.
An intern would bounce all over the place searching for the keys asking different people and being sent in different directions.
The thing is, there is no clearinghouse.
A new broker at the American Stock Exchange would be given a fake stock to trade as part of initiation.
Location: American Stock Exchange
The Prank: The entire AMEX floor would prank newbies by giving them a fake stock to trade. The entire floor would be on it and prevent the new broker from getting an order executed until the stock ran up five points. Then the newbie's booth would make the broker sell it. The crowd would block the new broker from getting the order executed until the stock ran down five points.
"The broker would not know what's going on. Then, all of the sudden, a hand would reach in and grab his collar of his shirt and rip it off and the crowd would cheer and he would now be considered 'one of us,'" former AMEX broker "Groucho" said.
Those who got engaged would be handcuffed outside while everyone else would taunt them.
Location: American Stock Exchange
The Prank: "When someone got married, we took them outside and handcuffed them to a fire hydrant and then tossed anything and everything we could find — ketchup, mustard, powder, flour. And actually we cuffed the bride-to-be alongside her future and did it to her also," former AMEX broker "Groucho" said.
If you showed up for your first day of work with a tie, traders would immediately cut it off.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: If you set foot on the trading floor with a tie, especially a college tie, you would get it cut off within seconds. According to a source, one AMEX employee used to hang the ties up like trophies.
Traders would slip ketchup packets in a timestamp machine that would squirt on the next person timestamping a trade.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: Back in the day, a timestamp machine was used to mark the time a trade occurred. They sensed the paper coming through the front, but not the back. So if you were really careful, you could put a ketchup packet in the back and have it explode on the next person using the device.
Traders in the pits in Chicago had to watch out for "gum bombs."
Location: CBOT
The Prank: What's a "gum bomb"?
A veteran trader from Chicago told us that this is when you stick a wad of chewed gum on the back of a trading ticket and flick it on the floor so it will get stuck on the bottom of someone's shoe.
"I got gum bombed all the time," the veteran CBOT trader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Business Insider. "I'm really a clumsy guy."
Meanwhile, at the NYMEX they would pull out the rotten eggs.
Location: NYMEX
The Prank: A trader once left his jacket out, and another trader slipped a rotten egg into one of the pockets.
The trader was walking around the next day wearing the jacket trying to figure out what that awful smell was before realizing what had happened.
Another trader told us that sometimes traders would randomly toss an egg into the commodities pits.
Of course, we're told that's not the case anymore.
Sometimes it was funny to shoulder-tap your boss just to tick him off a bit.
Location: CBOT
The Prank: "My favorite was the shoulder tap," a trader told us. "You would stand on the left and tap on the right shoulder and then look away. The person would say, 'Who's tapping me?'"
The trader said he had a boss who never appreciated it and would swear at him.
Sometimes NYSE floor traders would baby-powder bomb someone's newly shined shoes so the person would do a silly dance.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: Back when the floor of the NYSE was packed, a floor trader could come up behind someone with a bottle of baby powder while that person was engaged in a serious conversation.
The person with the baby powder would then wrap an arm around the trader and puff the powder on the guy's shoes.
Of course, the traders all had their shoes shined, so when they looked down they would notice the powder and start stamping their feet in a sort of dance, and a cloud of white powder would rise up.
Then the people around them would start chanting "Heya, Heya, Heya!"
"It was such a stupid gag — so corny!" a trader said.
NYSE traders would also attach toy cars on long strings to other traders' mesh jackets.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: A lot of the floor traders wear mesh jackets, and those tiny holes are really convenient for attaching things.
A popular trick was to take a long piece of string attached to a paperclip. At the end of the 15-foot-long piece a string was a toy car.
A trader would sneak up behind another person and attach it to that person's jacket. The result would be that the trader was wheeling around a little toy car without even realizing it.
A trader taped a bunch of straws together to blow cigarette smoke in his nemesis' booth.
Location: AMEX
The Prank: "I worked in a booth and had a contentious relationship with a broker two booths back. I couldn't stand the guy. One day, I was in my booth and smelled cigarette smoke. I was far enough away from the hallway where they permitted smoking not to smell it, so I couldn't understand why I kept smelling cigarette smoke. My nemesis had taken several drinking straws and taped them together so that the end was at my booth. He blew cigarette smoke into this long straw, and the smoke billowed out of the last straw at my booth. It was creative, I'll give him that."
One time a group of traders made another trader think he had won the lottery.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: This is not a floor prank tradition, but a trader told us how one guy made himself a target because of his obsession with the lottery.
The lottery-playing trader kept a stack of tickets and a paper.
One day some traders took his newspaper and played Saturday's numbers and put it in his stack so he appeared to have the winning lottery numbers.
"The guy thought he won the lottery until he looked at the date on the ticket!"
Naturally, he was disappointed.
A lot of the trading-floor pranks involve being crafty with scissors and paper.
Location: NYSE and CBOT
The Prank(s): We're told it was popular to cut things out of paper and stick it on someone's back.
For example, a trader might cut a knife out of paper and stick it on another person's back.
A popular trick was to cut out spurs from paper and tape them to one another.
Location: NYSE
The Prank: Some veteran floor traders told us another popular prank was to tape paper spurs on the back of someone's feet.
Then people would start yelling, "¡Arriba! ¡Epa! ¡Epa! ¡Epa! Yeehaw!"
CBOT traders used to pull off the 'classic' shark fin in the pit prank.
Location: CBOT
The Prank: Veteran traders from the CBOT told Business Insider they would take a trading card or two and fold it into the shape of a fin. Then they had to carefully slide it under someone's collar so it looked as if the person had a fin. Then everyone would scream, "Shark!"
"This was a tough one," a trader told us, explaining you had to have very dexterous hands. "They would be pissed if they caught you."
"It's a classic," another trader said.
If a fin isn't bad enough, some traders got tails pinned to them.
Location: CBOT
The Prank: If traders didn't watch out, they might be walking around with a tail of ticker tape.
Traders would take the ticker tape and attach it to the bottom of their coats.
Speaking of paper cutouts, who could ever forget the infamous "Who put this d--- on my back?" prank pulled off by a CBOT trader in 2007. Enjoy!
Now let's see what they really do when they're not pranking one another ...
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