A little bit of nostalgia in the high-tech trading world is a good thing.
That was the thinking of Doreen Mogavero, chief executive and principal of Mogavero Lee & Co., a New York Stock Exchange-based floor brokerage, when she decided to bring back a piece of the fabled exchange’s history and reopened the 90-year-old member’s smoke shop.
"I ended up presenting the reopening of the shop as a bit of the tradition of the old NYSE, amid all this new technology," Mogavero said. "In that respect, I decided to keep it the way it was."
The store, at the 12 Broad Street entrance to the New York, traces its roots back to the 1920s. It was then that Morris Raskin, already involved in the shop at its original 20 Broad Street locale, moved it to the New York and reopened a larger smoke shop where busy traders, brokers and others could run and get their cigars and cigarettes without missing a beat or a trade.
The store is a throwback to the days of an exchange when you could smoke on the floor and ticker tape littered the trading posts. Polished wood shelves, nooks and crannies are filled with traditional candy bars, sodas and water bottles to cater to on-the-fly traders.
Mogavero’s sweet shop serves up more traditional candy-store items, distinguishing her stand from the Sfloor’s Starbucks. The most popular items it sells? Its 1.5-liter bottles of water, Reese’s peanut butter cups and Hershey’s chocolates.
"Nobody here likes it when I run the store, as I really don’t know the prices of things," she joked. "I wind up giving stuff away."
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