from Sat NYPOST
October 28, 2007 -- A massive new erosion in the New York Stock Exchange's lucrative equity trading business to cheaper and faster competitors like Nasdaq - some 60 percent of volume is no longer traded by the floor, a jaw-dropping record - will force the Big Board to pull the plug on its multimillion-dollar "hybrid" system, experts say.
"The rapid decline, especially over the summer, has been pretty abrupt for the NYSE," said Jamie Selway, managing director at White Cap Trading, an institutional brokerage in New York. "A few years ago the exchange was sitting pretty."
The sudden decline in the proportion of stock trading by the floor was certainly surprising - but more could soon follow, according to Richard Repetto, an analyst for Sandler O'Neil & Partners who follows the NYSE holding company, NYSE Euronext.
The NYSE's hybrid - rolled out with great fanfare this year - currently matches less than 40 percent of all NYSE-listed volume, he noted.
Only about two years ago, it was double that. Today, under attack from the likes of Nasdaq, BATS and Direct Edge - which trade NYSE stocks on ECNs and superfast trading systems - the only gains for the Big Board come from the NYSE's affiliated high-speed Archipelago system.
That means the NYSE will move a step closer to shutting down the much puffed-up, computerized hybrid system it launched this year, exchange observers say.
A spokesman for the NYSE declined to comment.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10282007/business/nyse_can_forget_the_hybrid.htm
Only a matter of time before it is all electronic. With the reported shutting of the NYBOT by ICE, NYMEX possibly merging with NYSE and this, there won't be any pit traders left in NYC within a few years.
October 28, 2007 -- A massive new erosion in the New York Stock Exchange's lucrative equity trading business to cheaper and faster competitors like Nasdaq - some 60 percent of volume is no longer traded by the floor, a jaw-dropping record - will force the Big Board to pull the plug on its multimillion-dollar "hybrid" system, experts say.
"The rapid decline, especially over the summer, has been pretty abrupt for the NYSE," said Jamie Selway, managing director at White Cap Trading, an institutional brokerage in New York. "A few years ago the exchange was sitting pretty."
The sudden decline in the proportion of stock trading by the floor was certainly surprising - but more could soon follow, according to Richard Repetto, an analyst for Sandler O'Neil & Partners who follows the NYSE holding company, NYSE Euronext.
The NYSE's hybrid - rolled out with great fanfare this year - currently matches less than 40 percent of all NYSE-listed volume, he noted.
Only about two years ago, it was double that. Today, under attack from the likes of Nasdaq, BATS and Direct Edge - which trade NYSE stocks on ECNs and superfast trading systems - the only gains for the Big Board come from the NYSE's affiliated high-speed Archipelago system.
That means the NYSE will move a step closer to shutting down the much puffed-up, computerized hybrid system it launched this year, exchange observers say.
A spokesman for the NYSE declined to comment.
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10282007/business/nyse_can_forget_the_hybrid.htm
Only a matter of time before it is all electronic. With the reported shutting of the NYBOT by ICE, NYMEX possibly merging with NYSE and this, there won't be any pit traders left in NYC within a few years.
