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New York Stock Exchange - 11 Wall street - New York -

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street, Lower Manhattan, New York City, New York. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at US$30.1 trillion as of February 2018. The average daily trading value was approximately US$169 billion in 2013. The NYSE trading floor is located at 11 Wall Street and is composed of 21 rooms used for the facilitation of trading. A fifth trading room, located at 30 Broad Street, was closed in February 2007. The main building and the 11 Wall Street building were designated National Historic Landmarks in 1978.

 

The NYSE is owned by Intercontinental Exchange, an American holding company that it also lists (NYSE: ICE). Previously, it was part of NYSE Euronext (NYX), which was formed by the NYSE's 2007 merger with Euronext.

 

 

History

The earliest recorded organization of securities trading in New York among brokers directly dealing with each other can be traced to the Buttonwood Agreement. Previously securities exchange had been intermediated by the auctioneers who also conducted more mundane auctions of commodities such as wheat and tobacco. On May 17, 1792 twenty four brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement which set a floor commission rate charged to clients and bound the signers to give preference to the other signers in securities sales. The earliest securities traded were mostly governmental securities such as War Bonds from the Revolutionary War and First Bank of the United States stock,[11] although Bank of New York stock was a non-governmental security traded in the early days. The Bank of North America along with the First Bank of the United States and the Bank of New York were the first shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

 

In 1817 the stockbrokers of New York operating under the Buttonwood Agreement instituted new reforms and reorganized. After sending a delegation to Philadelphia to observe the organization of their board of brokers, restrictions on manipulative trading were adopted as well as formal organs of governance. After re-forming as the New York Stock and Exchange Board the broker organization began renting out space exclusively for securities trading, which previously had been taking place at the Tontine Coffee House. Several locations were used between 1817 and 1865, when the present location was adopted.

 

The invention of the electrical telegraph consolidated markets, and New York's market rose to dominance over Philadelphia after weathering some market panics better than other alternatives. The Open Board of Stock Brokers was established in 1864 as a competitor to the NYSE. With 354 members, the Open Board of Stock Brokers rivaled the NYSE in membership (which had 533) "because it used a more modern, continuous trading system superior to the NYSE’s twice-daily call sessions". The Open Board of Stock Brokers merged with the NYSE in 1869. Robert Wright of Bloomberg writes that the merger increased the NYSE's members as well as trading volume, as "several dozen regional exchanges were also competing with the NYSE for customers. Buyers, sellers and dealers all wanted to complete transactions as quickly and cheaply as technologically possible and that meant finding the markets with the most trading, or the greatest liquidity in today’s parlance. Minimizing competition was essential to keep a large number of orders flowing, and the merger helped the NYSE to maintain its reputation for providing superior liquidity." The Civil War greatly stimulated speculative securities trading in New York. By 1869 membership had to be capped, and has been sporadically increased since. The latter half of the nineteenth century saw rapid growth in securities trading.

 

Securities trade in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was prone to panics and crashes. Government regulation of securities trading was eventually seen as necessary, with arguably the most dramatic changes occurring in the 1930s after a major stock market crash precipitated the Great Depression.

 

The Stock Exchange Luncheon Club was situated on the seventh floor from 1898 until its closure in 2006.

 

The main building, located at 18 Broad Street, between the corners of Wall Street and Exchange Place, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, as was the 11 Wall Street building.

 

The NYSE announced its plans to merge with Archipelago on April 21, 2005, in a deal intended to reorganize the NYSE as a publicly traded company. NYSE's governing board voted to merge with rival Archipelago on December 6, 2005, and became a for-profit, public company. It began trading under the name NYSE Group on March 8, 2006. A little over one year later, on April 4, 2007, the NYSE Group completed its merger with Euronext, the European combined stock market, thus forming NYSE Euronext, the first transatlantic stock exchange.

 

Wall Street is the leading US money center for international financial activities and the foremost US location for the conduct of wholesale financial services. "It comprises a matrix of wholesale financial sectors, financial markets, financial institutions, and financial industry firms" (Robert, 2002). The principal sectors are securities industry, commercial banking, asset management, and insurance.

 

Prior to the acquisition of NYSE Euronext by the ICE in 2013, Marsh Carter was the Chairman of the NYSE and the CEO was Duncan Niederauer. Presently, the chairman is Jeffrey Sprecher. In 2016, NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange Inc. earned $419 million in listings-related revenues.

 

The New York Stock Exchange (sometimes referred to as "the Big Board") provides a means for buyers and sellers to trade shares of stock in companies registered for public trading. The NYSE is open for trading Monday through Friday from 9:30 am – 4:00 pm ET, with the exception of holidays declared by the Exchange in advance.

 

The NYSE trades in a continuous auction format, where traders can execute stock transactions on behalf of investors. They will gather around the appropriate post where a specialist broker, who is employed by a NYSE member firm (that is, he/she is not an employee of the New York Stock Exchange), acts as an auctioneer in an open outcry auction market environment to bring buyers and sellers together and to manage the actual auction. They do on occasion (approximately 10% of the time) facilitate the trades by committing their own capital and as a matter of course disseminate information to the crowd that helps to bring buyers and sellers together. The auction process moved toward automation in 1995 through the use of wireless hand held computers (HHC). The system enabled traders to receive and execute orders electronically via wireless transmission. On September 25, 1995, NYSE member Michael Einersen, who designed and developed this system, executed 1000 shares of IBM through this HHC ending a 203-year process of paper transactions and ushering in an era of automated trading.

 

As of January 24, 2007, all NYSE stocks can be traded via its electronic hybrid market (except for a small group of very high-priced stocks). Customers can now send orders for immediate electronic execution, or route orders to the floor for trade in the auction market. In the first three months of 2007, in excess of 82% of all order volume was delivered to the floor electronically. NYSE works with US regulators like the SEC and CFTC to coordinate risk management measures in the electronic trading environment through the implementation of mechanisms like circuit breakers and liquidity replenishment points.

 

Until 2005, the right to directly trade shares on the exchange was conferred upon owners of the 1,366 "seats". The term comes from the fact that up until the 1870s NYSE members sat in chairs to trade. In 1868, the number of seats was fixed at 533, and this number was increased several times over the years. In 1953, the number of seats was set at 1,366. These seats were a sought-after commodity as they conferred the ability to directly trade stock on the NYSE, and seat holders were commonly referred to as members of the NYSE. The Barnes family is the only known lineage to have five generations of NYSE members: Winthrop H. Barnes (admitted 1894), Richard W.P. Barnes (admitted 1926), Richard S. Barnes (admitted 1951), Robert H. Barnes (admitted 1972), Derek J. Barnes (admitted 2003). Seat prices varied widely over the years, generally falling during recessions and rising during economic expansions. The most expensive inflation-adjusted seat was sold in 1929 for $625,000, which, today, would be over six million dollars. In recent times, seats have sold for as high as $4 million in the late 1990s and as low as $1 million in 2001. In 2005, seat prices shot up to $3.25 million as the exchange entered into an agreement to merge with Archipelago and became a for-profit, publicly traded company. Seat owners received $500,000 in cash per seat and 77,000 shares of the newly formed corporation. The NYSE now sells one-year licenses to trade directly on the exchange. Licenses for floor trading are available for $40,000 and a license for bond trading is available for as little as $1,000 as of 2010. Neither are resell-able, but may be transferable during a change of ownership of a corporation holding a trading license.

 

Following the Black Monday market crash in 1987, NYSE imposed trading curbs to reduce market volatility and massive panic sell-offs. Following the 2011 rule change, at the start of each trading day, the NYSE sets three circuit breaker levels at levels of 7% (Level 1), 13% (Level 2), and 20% (Level 3) of the average closing price of the S&P 500 for the preceding trading day. Level 1 and Level 2 declines result in a 15-minute trading halt unless they occur after 3:25 pm, when no trading halts apply. A Level 3 decline results in trading being suspended for the remainder of the day. (The biggest one-day decline in the S&P 500 since 1987 was the 9.0% drop on October 15, 2008.)

 

 

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Uploaded on November 9, 2019
Taken on October 20, 2019