Starting Monday, 17 Nov., No More NYSE 'Sub-Penny Halts'

By: Ray Pellecchia

File Under: NYSE, NYSE Arca

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Another bit of good news that came out yesterday is that effective Monday, Nov. 17, NYSE will no longer need to halt stocks whose price falls below a buck and route any orders in those stocks to our sister NYSE Arca platform.

We've changed our system to be able to recognize sub-penny prices at which other markets might quote those stocks, so we can route to those markets if appropriate, as required by Reg. NMS if another market posts a better price.

Just to be clear: these halts were for operational reasons, as distinct from a regulatory halt that is implemented when a company's stock no longer meets our listing standards. All of these continued throughout to be listed on NYSE; they were just traded on our NYSE Arca platform because of this operational reason.

The details of the change are in this NYSE Trader notice, along with a link to the list of affected stocks and the rule filing about this change.

Hey, I forgot the historical trivia in my post earlier today! Our switchboard has been flooded with complaints, people have been threatening to cancel their subscriptions, and...wait...what's that? We don't have a switchboard?

Ahem. Anyway. To put the world right again:

On This Day (NYTimes.com) in 1972, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 for the first time.

The Times' article about the event, which is worth reading as a historical artifact, recounts:

At 3:29 P.M., red light bars flashed on above and below each of the time clocks surrounding the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This was the traditional visual signal to show that one minute of training time remained. At the same moment, a bell began clanging on the speaker's rostrum - the auditory warning.

Traders, brokers and clerks on the floor - aware that history was in the making - broke into cheers that lasted about 20 seconds. Some paper was tossed in the air and drifted down like confetti.

Several hundred persons on the floor then turned to face newsreel cameras grinding away on the member's gallery, some brokers waving like fans at a football game.

Big Board volume also gave the exchange community something to cheer about. It rose to 20.20 million shares, picking up the tempo as prices climbed.

An office broker, watching the stock tape from his desk downtown, murmured in wonderment: "There's a sort of renewed confidence in the whole economic outlook."

That confident outlook would soon be stomped by the bear market of 1973-74.