Clean Your Skirts

Categories: Stocks, Trading, Regulations

Picture a town in the days of the Wild West. The streets consisted of dust and mud. Meanwhile, the fashion at the time was for women to wear skirts down to their ankles. As a result, women frequently had to clean their skirts.

Alright, let's fast forward to another Wild West...the wild world of the stock market. Here, "clean your skirts" refers to the trader checking to make sure all the Ts are crossed and the Is are dotted.

In other words, they need to verify everything to make sure there are not any extenuating circumstances or preconditions surrounding the trade. It also means checking all the nuts and bolts of the transaction...like that the price and the quantity is correct, and that the trade meets all the client’s stated conditions.

Now, if you have some time, we'd like to discuss gender bias in the financial field and the implication of the gendered language of this phrase...you might want to settle in.

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