An earlier version of this post appeared with errors introduced in the editing process. It has been updated and corrected throughout.

The New York Stock Exchange | NYSE

FORTUNE -- Kenny Polcari is walking across the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, reminiscing about the good old days. Times change, and today the trading floor is littered with flat screens.

Here's What A NYSE Floor Broker Does - Business Insider

Everything is automated, and the workplace Polcari has known for the better part of three decades is much tamer.

At first gradually and then all of a sudden, computers came to dominate his world, and much of what Polcari and the other institutional equity brokers did in person on the floor of the exchange has moved onto computer servers across the Hudson River in New Jersey. And now the Big Board has a new boss: IntercontinentalExchange , a company based in Atlanta. Polcari is tall and husky with immaculately-cropped salt and pepper hair. The day we met, he wore a blue jacket with his name etched in white lettering across the right breast pocket.

He talks close and fast, all hands all the time. He is a floor trader, whose job it is to offer some of the myriad buy and sell orders -- liquidity -- that grease the gears of the exchanges, and keep global market capitalism humming.

Floor Trader (FT)

Beware that Hedge Fund in the Window. There were 5, people working on the floor of the exchange; a lot of whom were boisterous types, just like him. Everything that traded ended up here," and everything Polcari did was personal.

This meant that between the start of trading at 9: That's where everyone that wanted to buy or sell that stock at any given moment in time would be, so when you walked into the crowd you could assess supply and demand, you could see it. Out on the floor, among the hordes of buyers and sellers, Polcari says he could feel out the market in a very real, immediate way, talking at fellow traders and getting "information that I could then use to help me figure out how I'm going to execute the order.

How aggressive or not I'm going to be. Today, the number of traders on the ground at the NYSE nyx has dwindled to , occupying three rooms instead of five. The near-sound-stage silence has proven ideal for cable television networks like CNBC and Bloomberg to set up permanent broadcasting outposts right on the floor Polcari is himself a mainstay of the cable news commentary circuit, and networks often turn to him for live commentary from the trading floor.

Polcari still likes his job, and when you get him talking about the markets, he can work himself into an arm-flailing tizzy. He remains a staunch defender of his craft, firm in his belief that the move away from humans has very real negative implications for how the markets operate on a day-to-day basis.

You had to really know that, it's not something you could program a computer to do," he says.

Computers, he says, are bad at what he's best at: Energy Boom, a Growing Tax Dodge. If some financial HAL like the computer in " A computer will do what you tell it to do," he says, even if what you tell it to do is a mistake.

The computer did what it was told to do, but it was a mistake. Polcari is losing the battle. He seems resigned to the transformation.

You change with the environment," he says, getting ready for a television interview from the floor of the exchange before heading home for the weekend. But, he says, all this change has eaten away at the old pit that so electrified him when he first got into the business -- an atmosphere that seemed like it was built just for people like him. Officials Say Russian Hackers Targeted 21 States During the Presidential Election.

Reddit Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian Is Using His Own Site for Parenting Tips. Nike Why Nike May Start Selling Directly on Amazon. A day in the quiet life of a NYSE floor trader. Floor trader Kenny Polcari. His workday is pretty tame these days. Customer Service Site Map Privacy Policy Advertising Ad Choices Terms of Use Your California Privacy Rights Careers.

All products and services featured are based solely on editorial selection. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Quotes delayed at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Interactive Data. ETF and Mutual Fund data provided by Morningstar , Inc.

Powered and implemented by Interactive Data Managed Solutions.