The Washington Post described Art Cashin as Wall Street’s equivalent of Walter Cronkite. He was the director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange and a UBS employee. He had been a regular on CNBC for almost 25 years and was 83 years old.
Cashin was one of the rarest of creatures in the fiercely competitive and frequently violent world of stock market commentary: a man who was revered by both liberals and conservatives, bulls and bears. It appeared that he had very few opponents.
He was a raconteur, a storyteller, and a terrific drinker.
After trading stopped, he gathered a group of friends who shared his interests every day for decades. They first met at the bar of the NYSE luncheon club and later moved across the street to Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, where they were known as the Friends of Fermentation. He always drank Dewar’s on the rocks.
A combination of charm, humor, intelligence, and a resolute refusal to embrace many of the contemporary world’s conveniences were responsible for Cashin’s success. He was connected to a NYSE custom. He led the singing of the hymn Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, which was written in 1905, on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve every year.
Cashin claimed to value his anonymity and refused to use credit cards, paying with cash for everything, including his large bar bills. His notes were handwritten and emailed to his helper; he never learned how to use a computer. He hardly ever answered his antiquated flip phone for years.
The documents he had accumulated over the decades were heaped high on his desk. Sometimes it looked like a recycling center.
Cashin’s ties were always out of style, and his suits were always rumpled.
But his demeanor was not random, nor was his look. It was a component of a persona that had been meticulously crafted on Wall Street over more than half a century.
The year 1941 saw the birth of Arthur D. Cashin Jr. in Jersey City, New Jersey. His parents oversaw an apartment complex as superintendents. When he was just 17 years old and still in high school, he started working in business in 1959 at Thomson McKinnon, a brokerage firm. When Cashin’s father passed away suddenly that year, he was forced to enter the workforce.
At the age of 23, he joined the NYSE and joined P.R. Herzig & Co. as a partner in 1964.
The NYSE floor was where the great bulk of all trading at the time took place. Early memories of Cashin are dominated by the sound of thousands of brokers yelling at one another. He asserted that because sellers sounded frantic, he could tell if the market was rising or falling based on the volume of the yelling. I would therefore know that the sellers were approaching me if the sounds had a high pitch. In a 2018 interview, he stated, “If it was a rumble, I would know that it was probably buyers coming.”
Disgusted by the corruption in Jersey City, his hometown, Cashin entered a mayoral campaign in the middle of the 1970s. In a field of five, I believe I placed 12th, he remarked. However, there was little chance that I would be elected after they found out I was honest.
He went back to work on Wall Street. He began managing PaineWebber’s floor business in 1980 and remained in that role until UBS acquired the company in 2000.
Then 2001 arrived.
After terrorists slammed two jetliners into the World Trade capital towers on September 11, 2001, killing over 2,600 people in the country’s financial capital, Cashin would frequently remember what it was like to flee Ground Zero.
Thirteen days later, he said in a remark, “Many of us left that Tuesday, walking through streets onto which ash, smoke, and business envelopes fell snow-like, blocking both your view and your breathing.”However, strangers were welcomed into the caravan and given a spare moist cloth to breathe through while walking, which was kept in their pockets. There was a volunteer fleet of tugboats, fishing boats, and mini-ferries that resembled the Dunkirk evacuation when we arrived at the East River (Brooklyn side of Manhattan). No fee. No cash. Please allow me to assist you! No one was given a name. Thank-you notes will not be issued. However, Americans—including those in New York—who freely donate to strangers but quarrel with neighbors all of a sudden become one group. We all internalize the survivor’s dilemma when we return to Wall Street in the days that follow, using new and peculiar routes. Although we are fortunate to be alive, why us?
Cashin chaired the NYSE Fallen Heroes Fund following the September 11 attacks, which gave millions of dollars to the families of first responders who were killed while performing their duties.
He was a well-known stock market storyteller, but he was also a respected market historian. Although he was a careful observer of both technical and fundamental trading patterns, he never allowed statistics to overshadow his folkloric explanations of the market, which even casual spectators could understand. He frequently described Wall Street as a collection of individuals with a wide range of viewpoints. Every day, as if it were a John Wayne Western, the bulls and bears would battle it out in his universe. A recurrent theme was, “The bulls are circling the wagons, trying to defend the highs.”
For over 40 years, his daily market commentary, Cashin’s Comments, was widely read on Wall Street and sent to clients regularly. Usually, it started with an analysis of a significant event that happened on that date (for example, the global flu epidemic in the United States reached a peak on this date in 1918). Following a brief history lesson, it connected that event to the day’s market events (for example, on Wednesday morning before the market opened, U.S. stock futures appeared to be on the verge of contracting the flu). A few of the outlooks were hazy, and several of the earnings reports were not very positive.
Long before the term was created, he was a behavioral psychologist and a great observer of human behavior. He had witnessed numerous instances of human panic and the consequences of giving in to the first impulse to sell without hesitation. “It indicates that people tend to overreact and not give things enough thought,” he said. Once more, you divide individuals into two groups: those who view events suspiciously and those who say, “Oh, I have to respond to that.” Those who respond right away seldom succeed. Those that are a little suspect perform far better.
His family and the New York Stock Exchange were his two greatest loves. The legendary NYSE trading floor still exists in the era of automated trading, albeit in a much reduced capacity. He stated he was upset when it closed during the COVID outbreak, but it made sense.
When asked about the emergence of computerized trading, which has gradually diminished that floor’s power, Cashin responded in a philosophical manner. I miss those magnificent days when your spirit hung on the fact that you were good for your word or you re outta here, he once said at Bobby Van s, but admitted that electronic trading had improved the speed and accuracy of trading, particularly recordkeeping.
Perhaps his modesty will be his most memorable quality among his many friends. He appeared to be truly perplexed by his fame. Arthur Cashin is of interest to people. “I’m not entirely sure why,” he remarked.
And when The Washington Post ran a long profile of his career in 2019, calling him Wall Street s version of CBS newsman Cronkite, he quipped: I think I owe an apology to Walter Cronkite.
The family respectfully asks that donations be sent to Xavier High School’s Arthur D. Cashin Jr. Memorial Scholarship in place of flowers. Xavier High School, 30 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, is the address where donations can be sent.
Martin Steinberg of CNBC contributed to this story.
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