Good Morning, It's Quarterly Expiration Day!

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

• 1 Comments
• Email Entry

Forgive me, I knew this on Monday and totally forgot to blog it -- today is the quarterly expiration of stock and index futures and options. It's usually the third Friday of the last month of the quarter, but because we're closed on Friday, it's today.

Here is the memo with the relevant procedures and rules.

What else can I tell you about today?

On This Day in 1969, according to NYTimes.com, John married Yoko.

Finally made the plane into Paris,
Honeymooning down by the Seine.
Peter Brown called to say,
"You can make it OK,
You can get married in Gibraltar near Spain." ...

You know the rest. Happy anniversary, you crazy kids.

Today also is the birthday of Frederic W. Taylor (1856-1915), "an American inventor who helped industries worldwide become more efficient." I had never heard of him, but apparently, some of the management processes that we business types today started with Mr. Taylor. From his Times obit:

The writings and lectures of Frederic Winslow Taylor formed the basis of the recent reorganization of methods of handling labor In many of the largest industries in the country. The articles of Mr. Taylor on "Scientific Management" in 1911 had a good deal to do with giving its new, special meaning to the word "efficiency" and making it the watchword which it has become since that time.

One of his leading doctrines which has made a deep impression on business and industry in this country since that time is that a man who proves incompetent at one job should be fitted in where he can give good service, instead of being discharged. His life work was chiefly devoted to the simplification of industrial processes to reduce costs and increase outputs.

Mr. Taylor was born at Germantown, Philadelphia, on March 20, 1856, and was graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1883. He won the doubles championship of the United States at tennis at Newport in 1881. He entered the employ of the Midvale Steel Company at Philadelphia in 1878 and was successively gang boss, assistant foreman, foreman of the machine shop, master mechanic, chief draughtsman, and chief engineer.

In 1889 he began his special work of reorganizing the management of manufacturing establishments. A plant that he made over was made over from top to bottom. He laid out the system from the duties of the boy who carried drinking water to the unskilled laborers to the duties of the President, giving his solution to the problems of shop, office, accounting department and sales department, and emphasizing the necessity for the humane treatment of labor. Some of the big shops into which he introduced his theories of scientific management are the Bethlehem Steel Company, Cramp's Shipbuilding Company, and the Midvale Steel Company.

For his invention of the Taylor-White process of treating modern high-speed tools he received a gold medal from the Paris Exposition of 1900. He had received about 100 patents for various inventions, many of which are in general use.

Humane treatment of labor was not exactly in vogue at the turn of the century, and for his advocacy of it, a tip of the hat to Mr. Taylor.

As if you need reminding on this, we're closed tomorrow. Hope everyone enjoys the holiday weekend. Might be a good time to reflect on another piece of the above lyric from ol' Johnny:

Last night, the wife said,
"Oh boy, when you're dead,
you don't take nothing with you but your soul."
THINK!