SECURITIES: The City v. The Street

World's biggest securities market, with 10,000 issues traded, is the London Stock Exchange. For war "The House," as Londoners call its huge six-story building, has corrugated metal shutters on the windows, slabs of concrete over lavatory glass, skylights, pavements, etc. Inside, 30 seconds before the rest of London hears an air-raid siren's wail, a, special Klaxon stops the traders. They gather their books and scurry to their City offices, all less than half a mile away. Only red-and-blue liveried "waiters" (runners) are left on the echoing floor. So called because 18th-Century brokers did their trading in coffee houses,...

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