Exchange Bans One Kind of Snap-Back

First there was the Great Crash of 1929. Then there was Bloody Monday in ’87.

And now, the Great Rubber Band Ban of ’92.

Citing safety concerns and the need to maintain “a professional environment,” the Pacific Stock Exchange has prohibited traders from shooting rubber bands or throwing paper wads at colleagues on the trading floor.

The price of indiscretion: $1,000 for a first offense, $2,000 for a second and $5,000 for a third.

“There has always been a certain amount of horseplay on the floor, but I guess things were just getting a little out of hand,” exchange spokesman Dale Carlson said.

KNX-AM business broadcaster Jere Laird remembers when cigarettes were banned from the floor of the old exchange building on Spring Street after fires were started by hot ash sucked into ventilator shafts.

A prohibition against eating on the floor was initiated, Laird said, after traders complained of “very large, well-fed cockroaches.”