Paris Bourse

The official name is “The Company of the Paris Bank, Exchange, Trade, and Finance Brokers”. The governing body of the bourse is the chambre syndicale. A membership in the bourse can only be secured by purchase (as in the New York Stock Exchange) and then the candidate for membership must secure the approval of the Minister of Finance before he can present his name for election, and the election is by vote of the members as a whole and not by a committee. A member is elected for life as in the New York Stock Exchange. A membership in the Paris Bourse may be owned by twelve persons, but it must be in the name and control of some one of the owners, who alone has the right to do busine in the bourse and must own outright at least one fourth of the membership. The small enclosure in the Paris Bourse set apart for the tse of the seventy official brokers or agents de change is designated as the parquet; also the agents themselves as a body: are designated as the parquet to distinguish them from the couli e or body of outside brokers, these outside brokers as individuals being termed couli iers. | Parity. This word when applied to the price of a stock. - means a price which is equivalent or equal to the price for / the same stock when it is quoted on a different basis. The price in London of an American stock is at parity with the price in New York when the stock is selling in London at a price which, allowing for the difference in method of quoting, is equivalent or equal to the price at which it is selling in. New York. In dealings in American stocks on the London Stock Exchange 4 shillings is counted as $1. Four shillings being equal to 97 1-3 cents the price of an American stock must be 2 2-3 per cent (quotably 2 5-8 per cent) higher in London i than in New York if the London price is to be equivalent to Ti i _ (or at a parity with) the New York price. Not 2 5-8 per cent is. to be added arbitrarily to the New York price, but 2 5-8 per cent of the New York price, whatever it may be, is to be added to the New York price to make an equivalent London price. Thus, for a stock selling at 50 in New York the equivalent price in London would be 51 3-8 (while the fraction 3-8 is not strictly correct it is quotably correct). For a stock selling at roo in New York the equivalent price in London would be 102 5-8. Conversely, for a stock selling at 100 in London the equivalent price in New York would be 97 3-8 and for a stock selling at 50 in London the equivalent price in New York would be 48 5-8. In grain there is a normal difference in price between two markets equal to the cost of transporting the grain from the market where the lower price prevails to the market where the higher price prevails. When the difference is normal prices are at parity. It is the same in cotton, etc. 408