There is only one class of persons who may not subscribe for the Stock Exchange price service of the Exchange Telegraph Company, and those are outside brokers. Until about twenty years ago a roaring business in the way of betting on the tape used to be transacted in the offices of these outside brokers. Some say they derived their title of "bucket-shops" from the fact that the tape was made to fall from the machine into a bucket for tidiness' sake, but that derivation of the opprobrious title is doubtful. Then, however, the Stock Exchange Committee put a stop to the practice by informing the Exchange Telegraph Company that it must cease to supply outside brokers with the tape, or its privilege of collecting prices in the Stock Exchange would be withdrawn. It was with some difficulty that the privilege was obtained. The company collects the prices in the markets by means of its own staff, and the prices it telegraphs are by no means official.
A kind of weekly edition of the Stock Exchange Daily Official List is issued under exactly the same auspices as that list, and is called "The Stock Exchange Weekly Official Intelligence." It quotes all the same securities, repeating the salient particulars, but instead of giving the current price it shows the highest and lowest prices touched during the week which it covers and since the beginning of the year. It also gives a list of the securities which have been removed from the Daily List owing to absence of business in them, keeping on record the last price marked. It further publishes other important official information, giving notice of forthcoming settling days and buying-in days, recording the special settlements and quotations which have been applied for and have been granted; it gives notice as to when securities are to be quoted ex dividend; it announces dividends, forthcoming company meetings, and closing of transfer books; publishes important notices issued by companies, sets forth traffic returns, and imparts other information. The subscription is £2 10_s._ a year, exclusive of postage, and single copies may be obtained for 1_s._ 3_d._ each. It consists of about thirty large pages.
The information contained in the Daily Official List and in the Weekly Official Intelligence is covered in a ponderous tome called "The Stock Exchange Official Intelligence," which is issued annually. In spite of drastic steps taken in recent years to reduce the bulk of this important Stock Exchange publication, the current volume contains 1,784 pages, and weighs eleven or twelve pounds. Its published price is 50_s._ The great work deals exhaustively and concisely with practically every security of any importance known in the Stock Exchange, stating clearly the amount, the rate of interest borne or the dividends paid in the past few years, with the highest and lowest prices where they are quoted in the Official List. What amounts to an outline history of every security is furnished, and in the case of companies the names of the directors and officials are set forth. Besides being thus an encyclopædia of Stock Exchange securities, each annual volume contains a number of masterly authoritative treatises on topical subjects, and other appropriate information of a general character. In the compilation of such a work, which is now in its thirty-first year, a vast amount of documentary record has been collected and preserved. The Stock Exchange naturally possesses the most voluminous store of financial and company documents in the world.