Art Cashin, UBS’s director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange and a man the Washington Post described as “Wall Street’s version of Walter Cronkite,” has died. He was 83 years old and had been a regular on CNBC for more than 25 years.

In the highly competitive and often vicious world of stock market commentary, Cashin was that rarest of creatures: a man respected by all, bulls and bears, liberals and conservatives alike. He seemed to have almost no enemies.

He was a great drinker and raconteur, a storyteller.

For decades, every day after trading closed, he gathered a group of like-minded friends, first at the bar at the NYSE Luncheon Club, then across the street at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse, where the group became known as the “Friends of Fermentation.” His drink was Dewar’s , always with ice cubes.

Cashin’s success was due to a combination of charm, wit, intelligence and a stubborn refusal to adopt many of the conveniences of the modern world. He was a link to an NYSE tradition. Every Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, he led the singing of the 1905 song “Wait ‘Till the Sun Shines, Nellie.”

Cashin refused to use credit cards and paid everything, especially his extensive bar bills, with cash because he valued his anonymity. He never learned to use a computer – his notes were handwritten and then sent to his assistant. For years he used an outdated flip phone that he rarely answered.

His desk was piled high with the papers he had accumulated over the decades. At times it resembled a recycling plant.

Cashin’s suits were usually wrinkled and his ties were always out of date.

However, neither his appearance nor his posture were arbitrary. It was part of a personality carefully constructed over more than 50 years on Wall Street.

Arthur D. Cashin Jr. was born in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1941. His parents were managers of a residential building. His business career began in 1959 at Thomson McKinnon, a brokerage firm, when he was 17 and still in high school. Cashin was forced to enter the workforce when his father died unexpectedly that year.

In 1964, at the age of 23, he became a member of the NYSE and a partner in PR Herzig & Co.

At that time, the vast majority of all trading took place on the NYSE floor. Cashin’s early memories revolve around the noise of thousands of brokers shouting at each other. He claimed to be able to tell whether the market was moving up or down by the pitch of the screams, as the sellers sounded panicked. “And if the noise was loud, I would know the vendors were coming toward me. Or if it was a rumble, I would know there were probably buyers coming,” he said in a 2018 interview.

In the mid-1970s, Cashin, disgusted by the corruption in his hometown of Jersey City, ran for mayor. “I think I came twelfth in the field of five,” he said. “But once they found out I was honest, there wasn’t much chance for me to get elected.”

He returned to Wall Street. In 1980, he moved to PaineWebber and managed their branch operations. He continued this practice even after UBS took over PaineWebber in 2000.

Then came the year 2001.

Cashin often recalled what it was like to flee Ground Zero on Sept. 11, 2001, after terrorists crashed two planes into the World Trade Center towers, killing more than 2,600 people in the heart of the country’s financial center.

“Many of us walked that Tuesday through streets where ash, smoke and business envelopes fell like snow, blocking your view and your breathing,” he wrote in a comment 13 days later. “However, when we encountered a stranger, they were invited to join the convoy and offered an extra wet cloth (in their pockets) through which they could breathe while walking. When we reached the East River (Brooklyn side of Manhattan) there was a volunteer group of tug boats, fishing boats and mini ferries that looked like the Dunkirk evacuation. No thank you cards will be sent. But Americans—even New Yorkers—who give generously to strangers but argue with neighbors were suddenly a group. In the days when we wander new, strange paths back to Wall Street, we are all lucky enough to internalize the dilemma of being alive – but why us.”

After the September 11 attacks, Cashin led the NYSE Fallen Heroes Fund, which provided millions of dollars to the families of first responders killed in the line of duty.

Although he was a respected market historian, he was best known as a stock market storyteller. He was a careful observer of fundamental and technical trading patterns, but never let data get in the way of explaining the market in a folksy way that made it accessible to even the casual observer. He often spoke of Wall Street as a community of people with many different opinions. In his world, the bulls and bears fought each other every day as if it were all a John Wayne Western: “The bulls are circling the wagons, trying to defend the high ground,” was a common refrain.

His daily market commentary, Cashin’s Comments, was distributed continuously to clients for more than 40 years and received widespread attention on Wall Street. It always began with an analysis of an important event that occurred that day (“On this day in 1918, the global flu epidemic was in full swing in the United States”) and, after a brief history lesson, linked that event to the day’s market events ( “Before Wednesday morning’s open, U.S. stock futures looked like they might come down with the flu. Several earnings reports were less than rosy and some of the outlook was murky.”

He was a keen observer of human behavior and a behavioral psychologist long before the word was coined. He had seen time and time again how people around him panicked, and he had seen the impact of giving in without thinking to the initial desire to sell immediately. “It shows me that people tend to overreact — and not think things through carefully,” he said. “And you fall back into two groups of people: those who view events with suspicion and others who say, ‘Oh, I have to react to that.’ Those who react immediately rarely do well. If you’re a little suspicious, things are much better.

He had two great loves in his life: his family and the New York Stock Exchange. In the age of computerized trading, the fabled NYSE trading floor still exists, albeit in a much-reduced form. When it closed during the Covid pandemic, he said he was “disappointed… but it was understandable.”

Cashin was philosophical when asked about the rise of electronic trading, which has slowly but surely eroded the influence of this floor. “I miss those great days when your spirit depended on whether you kept your word or whether you got out of here,” he once said at Bobby Van’s, but admitted that electronic trading in particular improves the speed and accuracy of trading had records.

Among his many friends, he will perhaps be best remembered for his humility. He seemed genuinely confused about his popularity. “People have an interest in – in Arthur Cashin. I can’t quite understand why,” he said.

And when the Washington Post published an extensive overview of his career in 2019, calling him a Wall Street version of CBS journalist Cronkite, he quipped, “I think I owe Walter Cronkite an apology.”

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Arthur D. Cashin Jr. Memorial Scholarship at Xavier High School. Contributions may be sent to Xavier High School, 30 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011.

– CNBC’s Martin Steinberg contributed to this report.