Tightening up on stock jocks.

• Position: Robert Bambauer's efforts to professionalize the stockbroker trade

Stock-trading scandals and investor fraud seemed to follow one another like bad business lunches through the '80s and into 1991.

Robert L. Bambauer, a broker for 28 years and senior vice president at Interstate/Johnson Lane in Charlotte, says he's finally had enough. "I've seen the prestige of our industry go downhill," Bambauer, 58, says. "I'd like to think that others in our industry are just as interested in putting professionalism back in it."

Bambauer is in the middle of the cleanup effort as a member of the New York Stock Exchange's Testing Policy Advisory Committee. He has helped toughen the exam for registered representatives, and he's working now on revamping the exam for branch managers. He's also fought against the industry movement to allow new brokers to begin selling sooner.

In the '80s, many brokerage firms, eager to license brokers and cash in on the exploding market for yuppie investors, pressed for doing away with the required six-month waiting period. In 1987, it was shortened to four months.

Bambauer opposes further reductions and wants required continuing education for brokers. "That's the kind of thing that would make someone who shouldn't be in this business uncomfortable," he says.

He got a shot at pushing his idea in July when the exchange put him on a subcommittee to set guidelines for the National Association of Securities Dealers regarding broker qualifications. He met in Princeton, N.J., for three days with nine other...