Art Cashin, a New York Stock Exchange fixture for decades, dies at 83

Art Cashin, the director of UBS’s floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange and the Washington Post man dubbed “Wall Street’s version of Walter Cronkite,” has died. He was 83 years old and a regular on CNBC for more than 25 years.

In the fiercely competitive and often vicious world of stock market commentary, Cashin is that rarest of creatures: a man respected by bulls and bears, liberals and conservatives alike. He seems to have almost no enemies.

He was a big drinker and a raconteur, a teller of stories.

For decades, he gathered a group of like-minded friends every day after closing business, first at the bar at the NYSE Lunch Club, then across the street at Bobby Vance’s Steakhouse, a group known as the “Friends of Fermentation.” .” His drink is Dewar, always on the rocks.

Cashin’s success is attributed to a combination of charm, wit, intelligence and a stubborn refusal to embrace many of the conveniences of the modern world. He was attached to the NYSE tradition. Every year, on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, she sang the 1905 song “Wait ‘Til the Sun Shines, Nellie.”

Cashin denied using credit cards and paid cash for everything, particularly his huge bar bills, saying he would prefer to remain anonymous. He never learned to use a computer – his notes were written by hand and then sent to his assistants. For years, he used an obsolete flip phone that rarely answered.

His desk was filled with papers he had collected over the decades. Sometimes, it resembles a recycling facility.

Cashin’s suits were often scruffy and his ties were always obsolete.

However, neither his appearance nor his behavior was accidental. It was part of a persona carefully constructed over more than 50 years on Wall Street.

Arthur D. Cashin Jr. was born in 1941 in Jersey City, New Jersey. His parents were superintendents of an apartment building. His business career began in 1959 at the brokerage firm Thomson McKinnon, when he was 17 and still in high school. Cashin was forced to join the workforce when his father died unexpectedly that year.

In 1964, at the age of 23, he became a member of the NYSE and partner of PR Herzig & Co.

At that time, the majority of all trading took place on the NYSE floor. Cashin’s earliest memories revolve around the din of thousands of brokers shouting at each other. He claims that it is possible to tell whether the market is moving up or down by the pitch of the scream, because sellers are panicking. “So if the pitch of the noise is high, I’ll know a seller is headed my way. Or if it’s a rumble, I’ll know it’s probably a buyer coming,” he said in a 2018 interview.

In the mid-1970s, disgusted by the corruption in his hometown of Jersey City, Cashin ran for mayor. “I think I ran 12th in a field of five,” he said. “But once they found out I was honest, I didn’t have much of a chance of getting elected.”

He returned to Wall Street. In 1980, he joined PineWebber and managed its floor operations, continuing after PineWebber was purchased by UBS in 2000.

Then came 2001.

Cashin often recalls how he escaped Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, after terrorists crashed two jetliners into the World Trade Center towers, killing more than 2,600 people in the heart of the nation’s financial center.

“Many of us walked the streets on Tuesday and ash, smoke and business envelopes fell like snow, blocking both your view and your breathing.” He wrote in commentary 13 days later. “Yet when strangers were met, they were invited to join the convoy and given a spare wet cloth (carried in pockets) to breathe as they walked. When we reached the East River (the Brooklyn side of Manhattan) there was a volunteer group of tugboats, fishing boats and mini-ferries that looked like the evacuation of Dunkirk — “I Help you!” someone Can’t get a name, but Americans – even New York Americans – give freely to strangers, but later we wander the new strange paths of Wall Street, we all embody the survivor’s dilemma – but we’re lucky to be alive.

After the September 11 attacks, Cashin chaired the NYSE “Fallen Heroes Fund,” which provided millions of dollars to the families of first responders killed in the line of duty.

Although he is a respected market historian, he is best known as a stock market storyteller. He was a keen observer of fundamental and technical trading patterns but never allowed the data to explain the market in a way that was accessible to even the casual observer. He often spoke of Wall Street as a community of people with different opinions. In his world, bulls and bears battle it out every day, like a John Wayne western: “The bulls are circling the wagons, trying to defend the high ground” was a common refrain.

His daily market commentary, Cashins Comments, was delivered continuously to clients for more than 40 years and was widely read on Wall Street. It invariably began with an analysis of a major event that occurred on that date (“On this date in 1918, a worldwide flu epidemic went into high gear in the US”), and followed by a brief history lesson tied that event to the day’s market events (“Pre-opening on Wednesday morning, US stock futures were A number of earnings reports seem to be coming in with a fever, and some outlooks are cloudy”).

He was a keen observer of human behavior, a behavioral psychologist even before the term was coined. He had seen his fellow humans panic over time, and he had seen the consequences of succumbing to the initial urge to sell immediately without thinking. “It tells me that people have a tendency to overreact — and not think things through carefully,” he said. “And you again divide into two groups of people, those who view events with some suspicion and others who say, ‘Oh, I have to respond to that.’ The immediate responders rarely do the least bit suspicious.

He had two great loves in his life: his family and the New York Stock Exchange. In the age of computerized trading, the fictional NYSE trading floor still survives, albeit in a much reduced form. When it was closed during the Covid pandemic, he said, “Disappointing… but it was understandable.”

Cashin was philosophical when asked about the rise of electronic commerce, which has slowly but surely eroded that ground influence. “I miss those glorious days when your soul hangs on the fact that you’re good at your word or you’re out of here,” he once told Bobby Van, but acknowledged that electronic business has improved the speed and accuracy of business, especially record keeping.

Among his many friends, he is perhaps best remembered for his modesty. He was genuinely confused about his popularity. “People are interested in Arthur Cashin. I don’t quite understand why,” he said.

And when the Washington Post ran a career-long profile of him in 2019, calling him the CBS newsman’s version of Wall Street’s Cronkite, he quipped: “I think I owe Walter Cronkite an apology.”

In lieu of flowers, the family wishes to donate to Arthur D. at Xavier High School. Donations are requested to the Cashin Jr. Memorial Scholarship. Contributions may be sent to Xavier High School, 30 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011.

– CNBC Martin Steinberg contributed to this report.