A Summer Floor Mythbuster

"If money is evil then that building is hell."

- Robert Downey Jr.

Hold onto your hats!

An intriguing blast from the past has reemerged! A clip from an old documentary of the iconic Robert Downey Jr called "The Last Party" during his visit to Wall Street 30 years ago has recently reemerged.

The documentary is set against the background of the 1992 Democratic Convention in New York which nominated Bill Clinton.

Anyway, he who is now most famous for playing mega rich plutocrat Tony Stark shares candid thoughts about the bustling financial hub and in particular life on the trading floor…

However, here things get complicated. A raft of media, - including many who ought to know better - have lazily tagged the Downey rant as taking place after a visit to the NYSE floor on Wall Street. However, the video is shot against the background of what looks suspiciously like a twin tower…which means it was closer to Battery Park than Wall Street itself. Indeed, the building behind Downey jr looks rather like the way to the NYMEX…

This isn't the NYSE floor. For one thing, those are open outcry pits as opposed to the NYSE's system with specialists for dealing stocks. Second the decor is all wrong and looks a lot like my (admittedly poor - it was a while ago!) recollections of the exchange in World Financial / World Trade Centre) …which again suggests NYMEX.

This might BTW also have some bearing on the extent of Robert Downey Jr's rather vitriolic rant after being on the floor. The NYMEX floor always felt to me like rather an outlier in NYC. It had a demographic that was astoundingly Republican compared to the prevailing NYC Democratic ethos. It was for instance the only place I can recall visiting in the tri-State area where it was not uncommon to see a clutch of folks wearing NRA badges during the 1990s. On that basis, Robert J Downey jr may have found his welcome was not as warm as might have been expected when he explained his presence was to make a documentary around New York centred on the Democratic Party convention to nominate Bill Clinton…

Anyway, one key takeaway - a lot of social media, even that propagated by supposedly business/financial media is wrong, the floor isn't the hallowed halls of the New York Stock Exchange… Thus, we proudly present, another Exchange Invest market Mythbuster!