Claim cc10fdbeChecked 09 Jul 2026
TrueOn the truth scale
“In a busy market, you are dealing in numbers.”
Reasoning & Evidence09 Jul 2026
The claim is essentially accurate in the market-making context: the SEC says a market maker is a firm that stands ready to buy or sell stock at publicly quoted prices, and those quotes are tied to specific share quantities; NYSE also describes market makers as actively quoting bids and offers throughout the trading day. So saying that, in a busy market, you are "dealing in numbers" is a fair shorthand for trading in prices, quotes, and quantities. Sources: SEC Investor.gov "Market Makers" (https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/glossary/market-makers); SEC Investor.gov "Executing an Order" (https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/investing-basics/how-stock-markets-work/executing-order); NYSE "NYSE DMMs: Meeting the Volatility Challenge" (https://www.nyse.com/data-insights/nyse-dmms-meeting-the-volatility-challenge?elq=00000000000000000000000000000000&elqTrackId=c0cc7d1ce2db4cca9c7d0aff8616f2c3&elqaid=4274&elqat=2&elqcsid=878&elqcst=272).
From article
The pressure of being a market-maker in a busy market, when you’ve got people all around you screaming and shouting at you and you’re dealing in numbers and it’s like that, that, that, that – that’s pretty pressurised. That’s why it’s a young man’s job. You don’t get many 50-year-old money-brokers: they can’t do it any more. Goodness me! It’s not an easy job. Not an easy job.
When I joined the City, it was the dying days of a gentlemen’s club: magnificent, socially wonderful but going nowhere – there was still a whiff of P G Wodehouse about people who toddled off to the City all day and did things that nobody understood at all. But what I saw in the Eighties and Nineties was London becoming in many ways a genuine global centre for entrepreneurial flair, for innovation, for very hard work – and for creating profits. And without those profits we can’t have the schools and hospitals we need in this country – it’s very, very simple. I am absolutely not conflicted in any way at all about the fact that what we did, overall, was for a social good.
Sources opened+ 18 search hits considered
| [1] | investor.gov |