Early options traders ridiculed spreadsheet users as unmanly and untraderlike.

Evidence

The care that Black put into his sheets does not, of course, explain why they were bought and used. Not all options traders believed using sheets was necessary. The options trader Blair Hull reports that he was mocked for using them. Fellow traders “would laugh at you and try to intimidate you out of the pit, saying `You’re not a man if you’re using those theoretical value sheets.’ They’d take your sheets and throw them down on the floor and say Be a man. Trade like a man… You shouldn’t be here. You’re not a trader. You can’t trade without those.” — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 722

Categorization

• CANDY: A vivid, memorable quote about machismo in 1970s trading pits mocking theory users.
• XREF: connects to: Black-Scholes price sheets faced mocking resistance from traders on the CBOE floor. — Donald MacKenzie & Yuval Millo, Constructing a Market, Performing Theory, 115; Active stock pickers treated index funds as an un-American threat to their profession — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 379