New York Stock Exchange

Well, that's it. I've peaked at the age of 21. As a result, this may or may not be my last blog entry since there's really nowhere to go but down after what I'm calling the best day of my life. After spending three days in New York over Labor Day weekend and a quick three days back in DC, I returned once again to the city for my Principles of Investment fieldtrip to the NYSE on Friday. Georgetown has a solid relationship with the exchange since a Georgetown grad sits on the board, so every year our professor takes his class for a tour. A tour of the traders floor would've been sweet enough, right? Yes, BUT the stars aligned in such a way that Georgetown rang the closing bell. I repeat...Georgetown rang the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange. I should emphasize that Professor Angel takes his class up about every year, but never before has his class had this honor. What luck.

The story gets better. About an hour before we were to ring the bell, I was informed that my professor would ring the bell and I had won the lottery to hit the gavel that ends trading exactly at 4 pm. I was speechless for about 20 seconds, then my attention turned to making sure the occasion was properly tivoed, then I started thinking of how many ways this could turn into quite the YouTube nightmare (for example, gavel flies from hand and onto the floor, causing serious injury, yaddi yadda). Once I got beyond the this could go terribly terribly wrong stage, I entered into kid in a candy store mode loving every minute of what was to follow.

According to credible sources, the closing bell is the most watched clip in the world and our tour guides said it would be played on 2200 stations internationally. I'm still working on securing a digital clip of the closing bell ceremony. The NYSE website posted this and supposedly you can watch a Windows Media clip, but I can't get it to work. All the power to you, though, if you can. Hopefully I'll be able to post a video by the end of the week.

We were met with golden name tags (not real gold), so I could tell from the start we were in for a treat. We definitely received the kicked up version of the tour since we were the closing bell group and not just a college student tour. We kicked it in the boardroom for about two hours with refreshments and beverage. Did I mention that the President and Co-Chief Operating Office stopped by to answer our questions for a half hour and then escorted us to the floor and up to the platform? Awesome. After we rang the bell, we mingled on the floor and even talked with a couple of (stressed out, bad day for the market) specialists.

Gtown ringing the closing bell... I can't even really explain the environment out on the floor, but I absolutely loved it. Specialist brokers are definitely the track athletes of the sport of business. I've never seen such a fast paced or intense environment. It was incredible.

The boardroom.

Posing like posers pose.

Even though the market had a down day, we ended our day with bull pics.

Priyanka, also a Georgetown student at the LSE last year. He just signed his life (well, three years) over to Goldman so he had me take the obligatory Wall Street picture for him as well to commemorate.