The Bumbling, Irrelevant New York Stock Exchange
the truth is that the N.Y.S.E. long ago lost its dominance over the stock market, with the final blow coming in March 2006 when the veritable New York Stock Exchange, then owned by its 1,366 seat holders, completed its merger with Archipelago Holdings, an electronic-trading company. The new publicly traded company became a mere facilitator of trades or the place to go to ring “the bell” after a company’s initial public offering. The floor of the N.Y.S.E. is little more than an elaborate backdrop for the cable-TV business programs at CNBC and Fox. Computers, some high-speed, some not, rule the markets for equity, for debt, for commodities, whatever. The United States alone has 11 exchanges and something like 50 places that stocks can be traded off exchanges. The volume of stocks traded on the N.Y.S.E. is a fraction of what it once was.