Ever since Michael Pascuma went to work at the American Stock Exchange in 1927, his small floor brokerage has nurtured his family for generations: Michael Pascuma Jr. joined his father at the Amex at age 24. But now Pascuma, 94, the world’s oldest working floor broker, is permitting -- indeed, encouraging -- a break in the family’s legacy.
His grandson and namesake is turning his back on the family business to join Lehman Brothers as an operations analyst. Michael Pascuma, 22, who graduated with a degree in finance from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, last May, hopes the entry-level job will land him a position trading electronically on Lehman’s “upstairs” desk. Says the senior Michael Pascuma wistfully, “I told him to go where the action is.”
Coming from someone who weathered the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression, that’s not a ringing endorsement of the Amex. As much as he loves the daily scrumming and shouting on Trinity Place, the elder Pascuma has seen electronic competitors -- such as Nasdaq and the International Securities Exchange -- win most of Amex’s volume and prestige.
Still, taking the old man’s advice wasn’t easy for the youngest Pascuma, who fondly remembers summers spent on the exchange floor with his grandfather and father. Michael Pascuma Jr. died in the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Though tempted to stay at the Amex to honor his father’s memory, the son also remembered Michael Pascuma Jr. occasionally trying to steer him toward a different future. “Me and my dad would discuss me going to a trading desk,” he says. “To go [to the Amex] for sentimental reasons might not be wise in the long run.”
But like all good traders, the Pascumas are hedging their bets: The grandfather, a short, energetic man who trades with old-fashioned paper tickets, has no plans to retire. That way, says his grandson, if things change, “I can always go back to the floor to live out the legacy.”
