Wire Room

A room in a house made entirely out of electrical wires.

In reality, a wire room is the room, department, collection of cubicles, etc. where all the behind-the-scenes activity of financial transactions takes place. Like...let’s say we place an order with our financial institution to buy 300 shares of Apple stock. That order goes to the institution’s wire room, and the folks working there then immediately route it to the stock exchange, or to our broker. Once the trade is made, notification is sent back to the wire room, and they then communicate that to the investors.

Wire rooms tend to be highly secure, and have pretty exacting accounting and reporting standards. In other words, they track everything they do and make sure they’re doing it securely. That way, if something goes sideways, they can look back through their records and figure out what happened, how, and why.