Reading the Market: Abstraction, Personification and the Financial Column of Town Topics Magazine

Abstract

This article examines the role of the market report as a performative technology that does not merely reflect the emerging world of financial capitalism in late nineteenth-century America but actively shapes it. It takes as its case study the financial pages of Town Topics, the preeminent society gossip magazine in the 1880s and 1890s. Although at first sight the financial section seems far removed from the salacious gossip that the main section of the magazine traded in, there are close connections between the two. An analysis of the rhetoric of the financial pages of Town Topics uncovers a mixture of abstraction and personification in their depictions of market activity. In the same way that the society gossip column in effect created the very possibility of “society” as both exclusive and public property, the genre of the financial page helped create the idea of “the market” as both a human-scale drama and an abstraction that was beyond the control of any individual, or even government.

Markets, bodies, and rhythms: A rhythmanalysis of financial markets from open-outcry trading to high-frequency trading

“…Third, such vernacular accounts of markets do not, in fact, appear to be disconnected from either scholarly accounts or from actual market action. As several scholars have demonstrated, markets and their scholarly representations are indeed indebted to more popular accounts (Hansen, 2012; Knight, 2012; Preda, 2004). In other words, popular accounts that are at first glance fictional need not be in stark opposition to scholarly accounts nor to actual markets, but could well be intimately intertwined with these, although an examination of their complex cross-circulations is beyond the scope of this paper.…”

“…3 The importance of The Pit is reflected in the fact that it is mentioned, albeit briefly, in some recent studies of financial markets (Knight, 2012: 1061; MacKenzie, 2006: 15; Preda, 2009: 210). We grant it a more extensive treatment.…”

Contrarian investment philosophy in the American stock market: on investment advice and the crowd conundrum

“…Apart from their idiosyncrasies and paradoxical nature, the 'how to' books produced an accessible and practical form of knowledge that appealed to a wide audience. Whether described as 'grassroots' (Knight, 2012, p. 1059) or 'vernacular' (Poitras, 2011;Preda, 2004), the significance of the knowledge produced in these books was its reliance on the reader to actualize the knowledge in practice. According to Alex Preda, sources of vernacular knowledge such as the 'how to' book provided the reader with 'know-how, techniques and rationalization procedures that help social actors make sense of their economic environment and the economic consequences of their actions', which distinguished them profoundly from the 'abstract, and formalized explanations' found in academic literature (Preda, 2004, p. 354).…”

“…Even though it conflicted with the interests of the Wall Street plutocracy, financial speculation, which was still often bracketed with horse-racing and other forms of gambling, seemed to have a mysterious appeal for the masses (Cowing, 1958, p. 405). This increased engagement with financial market activities was at least partially due to a proliferation of popularized speculation-and stock market-related stories in magazines, newspapers, and books, both fiction and nonfiction (Knight, 2012;Zimmerman, 2006). In addition, the public got a taste of and feel for speculation in the so-called bucketshops -small betting shops where ordinary people, unaffiliated with the exchanges, could bet on an increase or decrease in the price of certain stocks.…”