Opening Bell
Categories: Trading
You’ve seen it on CNBC. The newly minted CEO of whatever.com, which is just going public this day, rings it. They show it at 6:30 am California time. Ding ding ding. (It’s actually a button you push...at NASDAQ, anyway...that makes an electronicized version of a bell sound.)
It signifies the beginning of trading, and is a relic from the old world, when there actually needed to be a demarcation of when it was cool and then not cool to trade shares on an exchange. Remember that the NYSE has been around since before lights were a common Thing. Same deal with wrist watches. So the bell back then…mattered.