Wirehouse

Don’t worry—a wirehouse isn’t some warehouse with wires that could be used for the set of Saw 12. It’s just a full-service broker-dealer (a financial firm that buys and sells securities, then sells them to customers...like a financial middleman).

Back in the day, “wirehouse” was used more broadly (like by insurance companies), since wirehouse got its name from the fact that firms were wired together via telecommunication networks. Copper wire was like the medium of tech exchange back then. The term stuck with broker-dealers, even though we’re not so wired for wires in the modern era.

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Finance: What is a Bucket Shop?15 Views

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Finance, a la shmoop. What is a bucket shop? Anyone see wolf of Wallstreet?

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Remember Leo's firm yeah that was a bucket shop, it was set up to fraud, [Bucket shop stamp]

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deceive, steal, and basically take advantage of trusting naive rubes

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who gave Leo and his partners their money and well they basically did vile [Toilets]

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things with it. Bucket shop is a derogatory term coined [Leo holding money toilet paper]

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by the Supreme Court actually in a 1905 ruling, in practice bucket shops were

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often unregistered financial pool halls where quote investors unquote would bet [Pool tables]

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on short term stock moves and well never actually take delivery of a

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security. They would just like make the bed and then whatever happened they'd [Men in suits]

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settle in cash outside of the security system, think of the bucket shop as a

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first derivative of a real brokerage, such that cash comes in and goes out

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without a whole lot of logic behind it, it's like betting on what tickers gonna [Stock tickers]

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come up next on CNBC at the bottom of the screen you know that thing. Yeah so [Stock ticker appears under the CNBC logo]

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that's what that weird logic is or lack of it other than as a reflection of

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whether or not Ford ticker F went up a dime or not that day, like that's what [Ford stock price chart]

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bucket shops do you're just making bets on random things and yeah Ford the wolf [Chips being placed on a roulette table]

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of Wall Street's second favorite F word, fine film though should see it... [The wolf of wall street being played in a theatre]

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)