Happy anniversary, 100-mill day

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

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From nyse.com's history page:

Today in NYSE History
18 Aug 1982 -- The first 100-million-share day - a total of 132,681,120 shares were traded.

That must have been a bit of a shock in the summer of '82. A quick look at an old NYSE Fact Book shows that average daily trading volume for the year was 65 million shares. The year before, it was 47 million.

Looks like even then, we were planning and building out this utility to handle three times (or more) our average activity. That paid off again in 1987, when we handled 600 million+ shares a day on Oct. 19 and 20, even though the year before, average daily volume was 141 million shares.

And it's paid off ever since. Two dozen years after the first 100-million-share day, we often handle that much volume in the first few minutes.

Figured I'd trot out some trivia today today because I'm outta here for about two weeks on vacay, and wanted to give you HybridTalk addicts one more fix before donning my flip-flops.

Well, I actually don't own flip-flops. But you know what I mean. This space will be kinda quiet the next couple of weeks though you never know. Might try to pipe you in a little roar of the ocean from inside a shell from the Jersey shore.

And don't be surprised if it has a bit of wah-wah and feedback in it, because on this day in rock history:

1969 - Jimi Hendrix plays the unofficial last day of Woodstock (and bends every note in the national anthem while he's at it).