A Little Knowledge

Long has the New York Stock Exchange wailed that nobody understands it at all. Recently it hired Elmo Roper, specialist who conducts FORTUNE'S Survey, to find out for sure. He sampled 5,166 men and women, carefully scattered as to place, age, income, occupation. Last week the Exchange published the first installment of his findings: the answer to what the U. S. doesn't know about it.

>Only 33.5% of those interviewed said that they or their families had ever owned stocks. In the Rocky Mountain States it was 43.6%.

>Of 1,713 who had owned stocks, 27.5% said they had made money by it, 24.6% that they broke even, 44.4% that they lost. The others didn't know.

>39.6% said they paid no attention whatever to the stockmarket, 23% noticed big rises and falls, 15.1% followed "general quotations fairly regularly," 11.6% followed "certain stocks."

>34.9% thought "any small investor who buys stocks on the New York Stock Exchange is foolish"; 44.6% that "only 'insiders' can make much money on the stockmarket over a period of time"; 52.1% said speculation was gambling; 60% that anyone who buys stocks and bonds is speculating.

>78.8% were sure that stocks and bonds of companies are bought and sold on the New York Stock Exchange; the rest answered "no" or were not sure; 33.6% knew it traded in government bonds, 24.2% thought grain, 8.7% thought that the stock bought and sold on the Exchange is livestock.

>23.6% said that if they had extra money they would invest it in real estate; only 11.6% would invest in stocks.

>41.6% had no idea whether the Exchange was useful or useless; 13.6% called it "useful and well-run"; 26.8% said "it has done many things it should not have done, but we still need it"; 13.2% thought it "could be a useful institution but it won't be until drastic changes in it are made"; only 4.8% belonged to the radical fringe who believed "it has been a useless institution and should be done away with entirely."

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