Stock Exchange

A building or room in which stock brokers meet to transact their business of purchasing or selling stocks. An association of stock brokers for the purpose of transacting their business. In large cities, the stock business is transacted through the medium of the members of the board of brokers. This is an association of stock brokers governed by rules and regulations made by themselves, to which all the members are obliged to subject themselves. Admission is procured by ballot, and a member defaulting in his obligations forfeits his seat. A regular register of all the transactions is kept by an officer of the association, and questions arising between the members are generally decided by an arbitration committee. The official record of sales is the best evidence of the price of any stock on any particular day. The stocks dealt in at the sessions of the board are those which are placed on the list by a regular vote of the association; and when it is proposed to add a stock to the list, a committee is appointed to examine into the matter, and the board is generally guided by the report of such committee. Sewell, Bankr.

A building or room In which stock-brokers meet to transact their business of purchasing or selling stocks. A voluntary association (usually unincorporated) of persons who for convenience in the transaction of business with each other, have associated themselves to provide a common place for the transaction of their business. See Dos Passos, St. Brok. 14; Biddle, St. Brok. 40, 43; Leech v. Harris, 2 Brewst. (Pa.) 571; White v. Brownell, 2 Daly (N. Y.) 329. It Is usually not a corporation, and in such case it is not a partnership. In the absence of a statute its real estate is held by all the members in the same way as partnership real estate. At common law, all the members had to be joined in a suit; Dicey, Parties, 2d Am. ed. 148, 266; East Haddam Cent. B. Church v. Ecclesiastical Soc., 44 Conn. 259; though actions have been sustained against the exchange as a body; Leech v. Harris, 2 Brewst. (Pa.) 571; Appeal of Moxey, 9 Wkly. Notes Cas, (Pa.) 441. The members may make such reasonable regulations for the government of the body as they may think best; see People v. Medical Soc., 24 Barb. (N. Y.) 570; such rules bind the members assenting to them; Corn Exch. Ins. Co. v. Babcock, 4 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) 162; but their personal assent must appear; Austin v. Searing, 16 N. Y. 112, 69 Am. Dec. 665; it may be inferred from circumstances, as from their admissions and acting as members; L. R. 5 Eq. 63; Palmyra v. Morton, 25 Mo. 593; and a member is bound by a by-law passed during his membership, whether he votes for it or not; Mac Dowell v. Ackley, 8 Wkly. Notes Cas. (Pa.) 464. It is said that the courts will prevent the interference with a member’s rights in an unincorporated to public policy: Dos Passos, St. Brok. 36; White v. Brownell, 4 Abb. Pr. (N. S.) (N. Y.) 162; State v. Chamber of Commerce, 47 Wis. 670, 3 N. W\ 760; but see People v. Board of Trade, 80 111. 134. Stock Exchange, Scat in. Members of a stock exchange are entitled to what is known as a scat Seats are held subject to the rules of the exchange. They are a species of incorporeal property — a personal, individual right to exercise a certain calling in a certain place, but without the attributes of descendibility or assignability, which are characteristic of other species of property; Dos Passos, St. Brok. 87; Biddle, St. Brok. 50. There has been much. controversy as to whether a seat can be reached by an execution. It has been said: “1. In the disposition of a seat or the proceeds thereof, the members of the exchange will be preferred to outside creditors. 2. The seat is not the subject of seizure and sale on attachment and execution. 3. The proceeds of the seat, in the hands of the exchange, are capable of being reached after members’ claims have been satisfied, to the same extent and in the same mariner as any other money or property of a debtor. 4. A person owning a seat in the exchange can he compelled, by proceedings subsequent to execution, or under the direction of a receiver, to sell his seat to a person acceptable to the exchange, and devote the proceeds to the satisfaction of his judgment debts.” Dos Passos, St Brok. 96. See 20 Alb. L. J. 414; Habenicht v. Lissak, 78 Cal. 351, 20 Pac. 874, 5 L. R. A. 713, 12 Am. St Rep. 63. In Sparhawk v. Yerkes, 142 U. S. 1, 12 Sup. Ct. 104, 35 L. Ed. 915, it was held that a seat in a stock exchange is property, and passes to assignees in bankruptcy subject to the rules of the stock board. See Powell v. Waldron, 89 N. Y. 328, 42 Am. Rep. 301; Belton v. Hatch, 109 N. Y. 593, 17 N. E. 225, 4 Am. St. Rep. 495; Weaver v. Fisher, 110 111. 146. A seat on the stock exchange is property and can be pledged; Nashua Sav. Bk. v. Abbott, 181 Mass. 531, 63 N. E. 1058, 92 Am. St. Rep. 430. It is property, though incumbered with conditions when purchased; Hyde v. Woods, 94 U. S. 523, 24 L. Ed. 264. But it is held in Pennsylvania that a seat on the exchange was not property subject to execution in any form; Pancoast v. Gowen, 93 Pa. 66; at least, not until the owner’s debts due members of the board are paid; Pancoast v. Houston, 5 W’kly. Notes Cas. (Pa.) 36; that it is personal and cannot be transferred without the approval of the board; Shoemaker v. Produce Exchange, 15 Phila. (Pa.) 103. Stock exchange rules usually provide that seats are liable first to pay the members’ debts to a fellow-member, or a firm of w T hich the latter is a member; and also for arbitration committees to settle differences between In the absence of any specific provision therefor, the expulsion of a member of the St Louis stock exchange for fraud can not be considered as forfeiting to the exchange his property rights in his seat, and the proceeds, after paying any claims of the exchange or its members belong to the expelled member; In re Gaylord, 111 Fed. 717. A regular register of all the transactions is kept by an officer of the association, and questions arising between the members are generally decided by an arbitration committee. The official record of sales is the best evidence of the price of any stock on any particular day. The stocks dealt in at the sessions of the board are those which are placed on the list by a regular vote of the association; and when it is proposed to add a stock to the list, a committee is appointed to examine into the matter, and the board is generally guided by the report of such committee. A Missouri statute made it unlawful to keep in the state any office, store or other place for buying and selling stocks or commodities on margin or otherwise when not actually paid for or delivered at the time of the sale, without making a record of the transaction, and a memorandum stamped with a stamp issued by the state for the purpose. The act was held constitutional; Brodnax v. Missouri, 219 U. S. 287, 31 Sup. Ct. 238, 55 L. Ed. 219. Where the tribunal provided by a board of trade for disciplining members expels a member in accordance with its own rules, the merits of the judgment thus rendered will not be inquired into collaterally; Nelson v. Board of Trade, 58 111. App. 399. The only question for the court to determine in proceedings to compel a stock exchange to reinstate an expelled member is as to the regularity of the proceedings; People v. Produce Exchange, 119 N. Y. 401, 44 N. E. 84. See “Stock Exchange from Within.” by W. C. Van Antwerp. As to methods on the London Stock Exchange, see Quarterly Rev. July, 1912. See Brodhurst, Law & Pr. of Stock Exchange (London); Margin; Futures.

A voluntary association of persons (not usually a corporation) who, for convenience in the transaction of business with each other, have associated themselves to provide a common .place for the transaction of their business; an (association of stock-brokers. Dos Passos, Stock-Brok. 14. The building or room used by an association of stock-brokers for meeting for the transaction of their common business.

Defined under Stock in Black's Law Dictionary.