Who'll Buy My Stocks?

Stockbrokers, sure that new customers are hidden all over the prosperous U.S., have never agreed on where to look for them or what kind of sales talk to use. To find some of the answers, the New York Stock Exchange hired three research organizations to poll the public. Reported the pollsters: customers are almost everywhere. For example, 16 million nonshare-owners' households want to know more about common stocks.

The surveys showed that 20 million adults would be interested in investment plans similar to the Stock Exchange's Monthly Investment Plan ("pay as you go"). Among those already buying under M.I.P., 95% would recommend it to their friends, 53% expect to continue their programs indefinitely and another 32% will continue for from one to more than five years. Although 31% of the M.I.P. investors had never owned stock before the program began, 29% of the pay-as-you-go purchasers have also bought stocks outside the program.

But brokers still have a big selling job ahead. The polls showed that only 23% of the population can define "common stock''; and oily four out of ten knew that the Exchange does not own the stocks it lists for sale.

In addition to spreading more information, brokers are going to have to do some leg work to get new customers. In the upper-income bracket ($10,000 and over) 65% of the people who have never owned stock reported that they had never been in contact with a broker, and half the adult population does not even know where to find a broker.

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