Record NY volume at the open -- why?

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE

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I was on the trading floor for this morning's Opening Bell, and the first few minutes were kind of incredible.

As of 09:31:19, we were trading 4.7 million shares a second on NYSE. That led to about 500 million shares in the first five minutes.

In the first half hour, NYSE traded a record 806.86 million shares, topping the old record of 790.15 million from the previous quarterly expiration, 21 Dec., 2007.

But I think those things are to be expected with a quarterly expiration.

What really struck me was that in the first five minutes, we had an 89-percent share of the trading in NYSE-listed issues. I asked some folks on the floor why such an exceptionally high percentage of customers would choose to send their orders to NYSE for the most critical time in a major expiration.

The answer I got: price and certainty. In crunch time, you can get it done here, and you can get it done at the right price.

It was nice to see so many customers voting for NYSE with their feet. Much appreciated.

Just coincidentally, some folks from our tech team rang the Opening Bell. There were being recognized for for migrating the industry-wide Consolidated Tape and Consolidated Quote systems from mainframe systems to a more cost-effective, lower-latency environment. This is part of realizing technology synergies with the NYSE Euronext integration. Nicely done, my colleagues -- keep it coming!