Hand signaling, also known as arb or arbing (short for
arbitrage), is a system of hand signals used on financial trading floors to communicate buy and sell information in an
open outcry trading environment. The system is used at financial exchanges such as the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) and the
American Stock Exchange
NYSE American, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and more recently as NYSE MKT, is an American stock exchange situated in New York City. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was know ...
(AMEX). The AMEX is the only U.S. stock market to permit the transmission of buy and sell orders through hand signals.
[Larry Harris, ''Trading and Exchanges'', Oxford University Press US: 2003, page 104, , ]
Traders usually flash the signals quickly across a room to make a sale or a purchase. Signals that occur with palms facing out and hands away from the body are an indication the gesturer wishes to sell. When traders face their palms in and hold their hands up, they are gesturing to buy.
Numbers one through five are gestured on one hand with the fingers pointing directly upwards. To indicate six through ten, the hand is held sideways, parallel to the ground. Counting starts from six when the hand is held in this way. Numbers gestured from the forehead are blocks of ten, blocks of hundreds and thousands can be indicated by repeatedly touching the forehead with a closed fist. The signals can otherwise be used to indicate months, specific trade option combinations or additional market information.
[ trading floor hand signals ]
Rules vary significantly among exchanges; however, the purpose of the gestures remains the same.
See also
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Chinese number gestures
Chinese number gestures are a method to signify the natural numbers one through ten using one hand. This method may have been developed to bridge the many varieties of Chinese—for example, the numbers 4 () and 10 () are hard to distinguis ...
*
Finger binary
Finger binary is a system for counting and displaying binary numbers on the fingers of either or both hands. Each finger represents one binary digit or bit. This allows counting from zero to 31 using the fingers of one hand, or 1023 using both: ...
*
Nonverbal communication
Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance ( pr ...
*
Sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...
References
External links
Trading Pit History
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Sign systems