FOR years a bitter debate has been raging over how to reform the operations of the nation's stock-trading business so that it can handle efficiently the diverse needs of more than 32 million investors. The need became obvious when the 1969-70 bear market forced more than a hundred brokerages into financial failure or shotgun mergers. The causes were numerous, but one overriding factor was that Wall Street was still geared to a bygone age of relatively slow trading by individual investors dealing in 100-share lots; the stock exchanges could not cope with...
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