Re: margin. The reason I don't mention it is because nothing I have read talks about it. Every so often I spend a few hours reading the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time mag, Fortune mag, Business Week, for the time period, like yesterday I read the first weeks of March, 1931 and July, 1931 for NYTimes and WSJ. Unfortunately it's on microfilm, which is a pain, but at GMU the microfilm is very fresh, unscratched. Too bad they don't have the really nice readers that project down onto a big white board, like they have at the Library of Congress. Those are nice because you don't have to read at a funny angle, sitting straight up for hours. My neck hurts.-g-
I saw only one reference to margin, a small paragraph that one broker wasn't going to have margin accounts anymore, in July 2, 1931 WSJ.
Business conditions were a little slow, especially compared to 1929, but everyone was sure it was temporary.
Someone PMed me that the statement that there was no margin requirements is a myth, there were margin requirements just like now.
On Thursday my Money and Banking teacher told us that the SEC laws of 1934/1935 were based on the rules of the New York Stock Exchange, which was self-regulating.
So maybe the answer is that the NYSE had margin requirements but not the other exchanges.
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Re: Fed tightening. From what I read in the NYTimes and WSJ, interest rates were dropping, and there was money to borrow, but demand was slack. |
