Market Woes Keep Traders From Meeting

Stock trader Howard Barten took a look around and proclaimed it a washout. “What a decimated convention this is,” he declared. “There’s a pall over the entire convention.”

Last week’s unexpected record trading volume on Wall Street produced unexpectedly low volume over the weekend at the annual convention of the National Security Traders Assn.

About 600 traders were expected, but only about 250 showed up. Organizers canceled the last day of the conference and a Securities and Exchange Commission official canceled her appearance.

Many East Coast representatives were too busy cleaning up paper work to make a transcontinental trip, explained Gary D. Fender, who was elected chairman of the national trader’s group on Sunday. “The trading aspect of the market can strain you. The paper crunch can break you,” said Fender, a senior vice president and over-the-counter stock trader for First Southwest, a Dallas-based brokerage.

Fender predicted that the Dow Jones industrial average would stay between 1,700 and 2,100 until Congress and the Reagan Administration act to address basic economic issues. Fender discounted the possibility of any repetition of last Monday’s unprecedented 508-point free fall. “In any market there’s a certain herd instinct. The herd ran over the cliff Monday morning.”

Two weeks of losses on Wall Street gave this year’s gathering a gloomy air, as traders assessed the damage.

‘Don’t believe anybody who tells you they avoided the blood bath--not a soul went untouched,” said Barten, a 15-year veteran of these conventions and an over-the-counter stock trader with Investors Center, a full-service brokerage based in Melville, N.Y.

“I’m quite sure we’ll hear stories after the air has cleared about firms which took a drubbing,” said another trader, “and even firms which went broke.”

Vendors at the convention complained about the low attendance and the status of those who did show up. “We met a few actual traders, but it mostly seemed to be people on the periphery,” a vendor of a computer data base said.

Traders from the major New York brokerages were scarce, and some bitterness toward them emerged. Barten complained that some traders did not answer their phones during the market’s plunge, seeking to avoid buying stocks that would drop in value before they could sell them again.

“The major firms are the major culprits, Merrill Lynch, E. F. Hutton, Goldman Sachs,” said Barton.

Joseph Hardiman, president of the National Assn. of Security Dealers, acknowledged in remarks at the convention that there was a problem with some brokerages not answering their telephones.

He said the NASD, a national industry group of brokerages and trading companies that polices securities trading, had begun “jawboning” with some major brokerages to oblige traders to answer their phones.

Stanley Beck, chairman of the Ontario Securities Commission, which oversees securities trading in that Canadian province, also addressed the group on Sunday. He spoke on efforts to deregulate Canadian banks. Linda Feinberg, executive assistant to the SEC chairman, canceled her appearance.

Few traders were telling lighthearted jokes over the weekend. ‘It’s really funny, usually, especially in our industry, any tragedy results in a lot of jokes. . . . There’s no conversation like there usually is, it’s just do your business and hang up the phone,” said Merrill Lankford, an over-the-counter stock trader for Weber Hall Sale & Associates, a Dallas-based brokerage.

The convention is scheduled to end at midday Tuesday, rather than Wednesday morning as previously planned. Some traders said they wouldn’t be able to stay even that long. An convention-goer from a leading Wall Street investment bank complained that after arranging for a weeklong vacation, he instead would have to fly back Sunday night to be in New York City at 6 a.m. this morning.

“When Rome’s burning, they like to have their firemen around--even if it doesn’t do any good,” he said. He wore a fire-red jacket, explaining, “That’s for all the red ink.”