Things move fast on a trading desk. There's not a lot of time to waste. Spitting out figures while taking long pulls of Red Bull and constantly abusing a stress ball, traders don't have time for niceties, like greetings, small talk, or saying the full price for something they're trading.
So they often leave off the big figure. The big figure is the part of a price that can be taken for granted. The price of something can be given in dollars and cents. As long as the dollar value stays relatively constant, traders often give just the cents.
Say crude oil is trading at $65.80 per barrel. The bids and asks that set the price (See: Bid and Asked) will likely be very close together. Say, a bid of $65.79 and an ask of $65.81. When communicating these numbers, there's not a lot of value in including the "big figure"...$65 in this case. So instead, traders might just say "79" or "81," since, on an operational basis, this is the only number that matters.
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Finance: What is the Fast Market Rule?11 Views
Finance a la shmoop what is the fast market rule? okay things get crazy here [Two guys riding a rollercoaster]
whoa and every now and then there's a leap well blimey, that's how things work
here on the London Stock Exchange.....
the fast market rule accommodates the chaos by giving brokers and other market
makers the freedom to trade outside the ranges published to the exchange why is
this needed? well because we live in a world of robots and artificial
intelligence and fat thumbs that hit the wrong keys and hackers from Russia China
and Mars all of whom can profit from chaotic disruption if you want to see
this phenomenon in its finest form well check out Jack Nicholson in the original [Man stood next to Jack Nicholson as Joker]
Batman movie and that was the best one so the logic revolves around the fact
that today even with all our massive computing power we would still rather
rely on human beings when you know the congressman hits the fan then assume
that a computer will be clever enough to figure out what's wrong quickly you know
when the world is on a collision course with chaos all over the place fast [Meteor strikes Earth]
market rule, humans over robots...
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