UPDATE: NYSE Proposes Allowing Email On The Trading Floor
20 Marzo 2011 - 3:36PM
Dow Jones News
Last year the New York Stock Exchange built booths that allowed
some brokers to sit for the first time. This week the exchange
asked regulators to permit an even bigger leap: allowing its market
makers to use email.
Thirty-one years after Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) introduced its
first personal computer and 23 years after Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)
launched its first commercial email program, the Big Board operator
proposed allowing its designated market makers to use "written
electronic communications" from the trading floor. The proposal was
made in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
posted this week.
"It's a natural evolution of where the market model, regulation
and technology have brought us," said NYSE Euronext (NYX) spokesman
Ray Pellecchia.
Under the proposal, designated market makers, who have
obligations to maintain an orderly market, would be allowed to use
email or instant messaging to communicate with approved coworkers
located off the trading floor. They still won't be able to email
personal contacts like family members or friends, or use cell
phones or BlackBerrys from their trading posts. Currently
designated market maker companies can only communicate with their
offices through approved telephone connections.
The exchange established stringent rules back when specialists
served as market makers and were able to see orders coming into the
exchange before other traders. Designated market makers, which
formally replaced specialists in 2008, don't have any sort of first
look at orders. Their role is to provide quotes in specific stocks
and work to smooth trade imbalances in exchange for incentives paid
by the exchange.
Tweaking the guidelines makes sense now that the designated
market makers no longer have an inside advantage, said Bob Seijas,
who spent 22 years as a specialist, most recently with Bank of
America, before retiring in 2001.
"It all stems from the fact that specialists were perceived to
have a time and place advantage and basically, they did," he said.
Previously, if anyone wanted to reach a specialist, his office
would alert him and the specialist would go to phone banks off the
floor to return the call.
Once, when a panicky chairman called to ask Seijas's advice
about a tender offer made for the company, Seijas had to stay
inside the exchange's then-smoking lounge until he could summon a
floor governor who could go to the floor and halt trading in the
stock.
Even under the new guidelines, designated market makers would
only be allowed to email about certain topics, like technology
issues or getting permission to place a bigger trade. Private order
information would not be allowed and the emails will be audited by
Wall Street watchdog, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority,
known as Finra.
Floor brokers, who were never privy to the same information as
specialists, are already able to use instant messaging and
email.
-By Kristina Peterson, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2917;
kristina.peterson@dowjones.com
Grafico Azioni NYSE Group (NYSE:NYX)
Storico
Da Giu 2024 a Lug 2024
Grafico Azioni NYSE Group (NYSE:NYX)
Storico
Da Lug 2023 a Lug 2024