As our letter says, NASDAQ and BATS are seeking "to:modify their respective routing strategies to provide preferential treatment for their own market participants before routing orders to away markets" and "provide non-public order information to a select class of market participants at the expense of a free and open market system."
Our market structure has gone astray, Larry Leibowitz told an industry market-structure conference this week; time for everyone to step up and engage in the dialogue about solutions before the opportunity passes.
MARIA BARTIROMO: The proposals coming out of the Obama Administration are the talk of the business world, particularly the tax on international profits. What are you hearing about this new proposal to tax profits differently?
DUNCAN L. NIEDERAUER: I was in Texas and California in recent weeks and probably met with 100 company executives. The reactions among many could be summarized in the following two observations. No. 1: Doesn’t the Obama Administration recognize that most [big] U.S. companies are multinationals that happen to be headquartered in the U.S.? No. 2: Doesn’t the Obama Administration appreciate that a multinational headquartered in the U.S. doing business overseas does not mean the company is evading taxes? If somebody who’s operating in the U.S. has an overseas business with a mailbox in a tax haven then obviously that is bad behavior and should be dealt with. Companies that have overseas businesses in legitimate tax jurisdictions, who pay taxes in those jurisdictions on the business they do there, that is not in the same category. And what I’m hearing from executives is that this proposal suggests we’re all behaving badly, when, in fact, I would imagine very few of us are.
Our co-CIO Steve Rubinow will talk about our open-source strategy and delivering optimal system performance in a mission-critical, high-demand environment.
From Scott Cutler: As our customers know, public companies will have to find unique ways of reaching investors, especially if the analyst slide continues. We see Virtua Research as one piece of that puzzle. NYSE.com now contains a financial modeling tool for select NYSE and NYSE Amex companies.
We're:
• Expanding our U.S. futures business beyond gold and silver futures;
• Partnering with MSCI, a leader in the field of indices;
• Offering a suite of brand-new, stock-index products;
• Complementing the liquidity on the NYSE Arca platform in ETFs based on MSCI indices;
• Moving two of the MSCI index futures from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 2010; they will be dual listed until then; and
• Becoming more competitive and creating a U.S. futures exchange with a unique value proposition to firms, customers and the public.
In the two-sides-to-every-story context, two letters representing the views of hundreds of NYSE floor brokers were sent to the Wall Street Journal to add a bit of balance and reality to an article that appeared in the newspaper’s May 4 edition. The Journal has not printed the letters, and since we feel it's a story worth telling, here are the letters.
The dollar sizes are modest and there aren’t many of them, but initial public offerings and secondary stock offerings are showing a surprising bit of life. “I call it a streak in the first inning,” says Scott R. Cutler, an executive vice president at NYSE Euronext who runs the exchange company’s listing for the Americas.
If you use floor brokers to help you execute your trading strategies (or are considering doing so), you might want to speak with a broker about how their algorithmic capabilities can help them best represent your orders.
In addition to concerns about price discovery and accurate trade reporting, Brigagliano targeted indications of interest sent between dark pools as another potential concern for regulators.
From Scott CutIer: I hope all you have noticed the string of successful IPOs listing recently, and that all of them have listed on the NYSE. Today marks the listing of the fifth domestic IPO on the U.S. markets, SolarWinds, Inc. In the most difficult IPO market in recent memory, SolarWinds and all four of the 2009 domestic IPOs before it, have chosen to list with the world’s most diverse exchange group, NYSE Euronext.
From Todd Wilemon: Well without further ado, I give you are newest order type. Drum roll, please! Please put your hands together, off your seat and on your feet, Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the …”WAIT Order!”
Flashing orders to a select group, even if the group is not limited by the market center's rules, runs contrary to other regulations, though, said Jamie Selway, managing director at White Cap Trading and former chief economist at Archipelago, one of the pioneering ECNs.
"Collaboration with the New York Stock Exchange, which operates the Euronext exchange, can be important bridge for Israeli companies ready for large offerings overseas. Especially now, when the primary market is frozen, we see the arrival of senior NYSE executives to Israel as an important vote of confidence in Israeli high-tech."
Advanced Trading magazine has a 40-photo essay depicting our new NYSE Amex options trading floor at 11 Wall St. Each photo has a caption that tells a little bit of the story of the options market's rebirth.
From Scott Cutler: Despite troubled economies around the globe, CEOs see silver linings, from retaining and hiring skilled employees to an active M&A market. The collective CEO views focus on business basics: remaining liquid, staying close to customers, and attracting shareholders.
From Scott Cutler: If you haven't noticed, there has been a tremendous amount of capital raised in the last few weeks. A total of $60B has been raised in secondary offerings so far this year, with 2/3rd of that since April 1, and 50 percent ($30B) in the last two weeks. The five top deals account for about a third of all secondary capital raised. Wells Fargo--$7.5B, Goldman--$5B, Morgan Stanley--$4B, ArcelorMittal--$2.9B, and US Bancorp--$2.5B.
From Dave Weiss: Additional systems work has improved NYSE Arca's response times from 2 milliseconds to under 1 ms. And we're not done yet.
And Americans aren't good at being patient, NYSE Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer said at a Financial Executives Institute summit last week, as he called for the nation to give the administration's plan some time to work.
Bernie McSherry: "The big names that are very liquid, there's not a lot of money that a broker can save for you. You know, if something is offered at 30 cents in very large size, I'm probably going to pay 30 cents when I get there and I'm not going to really make a difference. But in a stock that's thinly traded, those secondary and tertiary names, those stocks really fluctuate quite a lot. And the algorithms aren't really good at spotting those breaks in patterns. And human beings are good at pattern recognition. We notice when they're forming. We notice them when they are interrupted and a broker is adding value there."
The average size of NYSE's quote improved to 1,381 shares in March from 771 in August 2008, a 79% increase. In the top 100 issues, quoted size surged to 13,440 shares on NYSE from 4,030 in November.
That's one bit of news from our U.S. Equities newsletter. More after the jump.
The market for initial public offerings is still difficult to access for start-ups, but there are signs the window finally may be opening, our CEO Duncan Niederauer and U.S. Listings chief Scott Cutler told a group of reporters in our Palo Alto, Calif. office yesterday.
From Todd Wilemon: The options industry wrapped up its annual get-together this last weekend in South Florida. The best news from conference is our industry is strong and still growing even during the current financial crisis.
