Spinning like a speedometer in a Bugs Bunny cartoon

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

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I know this is nowhere as newsworthy as Monday's swoon in markets around the world. Or yesterday's drop, bounce, drop, bounce, and ultimately, drop. Or today's decline, rally, decline, rally, decline, and session-ending rally. Or any other words for the recent market moves that you can think of. No, not near as newsworthy as all that.

But.

Apart from all that activity, the last three days here (including last Friday) saw successive records set each day in message traffic coursing through our electronic systems. Not headline-making stuff. But when the market is moving, the last thing you need is for the market itself to break, technologically speaking. That's why we spent more than $25 million last year alone to increase our systems' capacity.

Today's share volume, which was well north of 2.8 billion shares on the NYSE floor alone last I looked -- looking like perhaps our second-highest ever -- is just the tip of the iceberg, the piece you see and can get your head around.

While I was on the floor just before the close today, a screen at our operations center was reflecting 16 system records and the numbers were still spinning like a speedometer in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. For the third consecutive session, we had record numbers of orders (187,232,513); quotes (both from here alone, 83,009,863; and consolidated, 476,750,885) and reports (200,398,251).

Not to bore you with a lot of statistics, but let me just pick out one central system -- our Common Message Switch (CMS) -- and tell you that we broke records multiple times today, and those records had been set yesterday, which themselves topped records set on Friday.

Measured over a peak 30-second period today, CMS averaged 40,429.1 messages per second. During a 1-minute period, it was 36,894.0 messages per second; and over a 5-minute stretch, 32,534.3 messages per second.

For an old-timer like me, I never thought I'd see numbers like these. And for those outside of these four walls, like I said, this is all remarkable mostly for what *didn't* happen. Our goal is to be there when you need us, to get you those reports and cancels fast enough that you can do something else, put up those quotes quick enough that you can get those best prices, here or (perish the thought!) away.

Most of all, to all those customers sending us all those millions of messages, let me say thank you. Keep 'em coming!