Meet the Street: Oldest Living Floor Broker Tells All

Michael Pascuma has seen many things in his six-plus decades working at the American Stock Exchange. Probably the oldest living floor broker in the U.S., at age 93, he started working as a runner there in 1927 when it was still known as the Curb Market, owing to the days when trading literally took place outside.

Michael Pascuma Floor Broker, American Stock Exchange

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Pascuma subsequently lived and worked through the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, and after years of clerking for other folks, he finally became a broker at age 35 in 1944, and then owner of his own firm in 1973.

Throughout the years, his company, MJP Securities, has resisted using the exchanges' automated order entry system for his large institutional clients and still stubbornly places trades in person. Recently, though, Pascuma had to deal with something unprecedented, witnessing the collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and the temporary shutdown of the exchange.

Michael Pascuma Jr., his son, who also was his partner, perished on Sept. 11 while having breakfast at Windows on the World.

In tribute to him, Pascuma, standing alongside New York Gov. George Pataki, Amex Chairman Salvatore Sodano and New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, helped ring the Amex's opening bell on Oct. 1 when the Exchange reopened for business at its proper premises.

TSC: How old were you when you started here at the Amex?

Pascuma: I was born in 1909 and started working there at the age of 17 in 1927, which means I've been a member for about 65 years.

TSC: What made you come here, and what was it like back then?

Pascuma: I was working as an office boy on 42nd Street for Collier's magazine, and then a friend of mine had a restaurant here on Thames Street. And I said to him, "Do you think you could help me get a job down here somewhere?" He helped me come in as a runner.

TSC: What were you trading?

Pascuma: We weren't trading. We were getting quotes. The office, if they wanted to get a quote, they would say, "Get me XYZ," so we would have to yell out to the specialists because at that time you could see all over the floor. Now it's different because of all the monitors. But we would signal: "Get me 2,000. Get me 5,000." Something like that. And I was pretty good at it, and I had a big, loud voice.

But then I wanted to get a little more money, so I moseyed around and finally got to the firm named Heller & Levinson and became a clerk for [them]. It was a much bigger outfit, and Levinson was a great broker. That would have been 1935.

TSC: What about the Great Depression and the stock market crash of 1929?

Pascuma: I was a clerk at the time, and people were jumping out of windows, for the simple reason, I'll tell you why -- at that time, as long as you had an account with a firm and you had some stocks, you could buy a stock all day long and trade it even though you didn't have any cash, unless you wound up being long on the stock, and then you would have to put the money up within two to three days.

So these people were trading with no money, and with the crash, they were long "up to here" and during the day they had no chance to get out. And now, they're hung. They haven't got the money. So people were committing suicide and jumping out the windows at that time.

TSC: Were you long at the time?

Pascuma: I didn't have any money to be long. I didn't have any money to buy stocks on faith. So now, here comes the Great Depression of 1930, and it was a long depression. When Mr. Levinson died in 1936, I became a member of the exchange. I was about 35 years old.

TSC: So you really paid your dues. Was that very exciting, to finally become a member of the American Stock Exchange?

Pascuma: Yeah, but it wasn't very exciting because it was tough. I was working for $25 a week and was just trying to stay in business. You know, Wall Street is feast or famine. It's really good or it's really bad. It's always been that way, and it's sort of like the way it is right now.

Here we come to 1960. Things pick up a little bit. The firms started to come out with IPOs. As I said before, Mr. Levinson passed away, so now Mr. Heller was in charge. His sister was married to Arthur Salomon of Salomon Bros. He was a pretty smart boy, and Heller took in a couple of specialists from Salomon to help with the IPOs. We were pretty fortunate. We did pretty well with a couple of the stocks that are now on the New York Stock Exchange. Some were good; some were not.

Heller, being the money man, then took in two partners to handle finance. Now, we're in the 1970s, when things go bad again. In 1973, Mr. Heller passed away. I was then 64. We were not making money -- in fact, we were losing money, and now the partners want out. So I bought them out for $100,000 and was flat broke. But I still had my clients, and I was determined to stay in business. In fact, we did very well and came back very nicely.

In fact, my son was over as a Big Board clerk, and he called me one day, and said, "Do you want to put me on the floor here as a broker?" I thought it would be a good experience, so in 1975, I bought him a seat. At that time they cost $30,000.

From there, we did very well. Thank God, I did very well for my children and my grandchildren, Michael's children. Each one has a college fund I built up very nicely.

TSC: So what stocks do you like now? It's a rough market. Do you like anything now besides cash?

Pascuma: Senior living homes.

TSC: What motivates you to continue working at the American Stock Exchange?

Pascuma: I love it. It's my whole life. But now with my son gone. ... He ran everything. He prepared everything and made it very easy for me. ...

TSC: Well, let's turn back to some of the many things you've experienced in your 65 years at the Amex. Do you still drink martinis at lunch? I'm told that Amex traders in the old days were known for their two-to-three martini lunches.

Pascuma: I don't drink and I don't smoke, although I knew the guy who ran Harry's of Hanover. And he was named Michael, also. Great guy. He wanted to take over Delmonico's, but they wouldn't sell it to him, which is why he moved down the street.

TSC: Well, maybe the fact that you don't drink or smoke explains how come you're still working at the age of 93.

Pascuma: Well, I'm 92 and a half. [Laughs -- as he downplays his actual age of 93.] God willing, you can come back here and interview me when I turn 100.