After more than 233 years of trading, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has once again hit a historic milestone. Today, it happens to be the beating heart of the global financial system. The NYSE was started in 1792, when twenty-four stockbrokers came together under a buttonwood tree. Since then, it has kept evolving, staying one step ahead of a rapidly changing industry polarized bitterly between the old print and new digital paradigms. As recent events have proven, it can take tremendous, unprecedented trading volumes in stride. That’s why it is critically important to the U.S. and global economies.
With the NYSE topping 50 million trades executed on April 9, it was an amazing feat. It witnessed more than $30 billion in shares traded, a new daily record for trading volume. The NYSE’s opening and closing auctions were up more than 20%. The result of this growth was over 32 billion dollars in trading activity per day. This extraordinary milestone demonstrates the exchange’s continued ability to remain nimble and responsive to shifting market conditions to continue attracting higher participation from market participants.
The NYSE has invested more than two centuries in building and refining its trading ecosystems. They draw on an incredible depth of intellect and wisdom to ensure vibrancy and viability of our communities’ economy. America’s largest and most liquid financial market is so successful because of the financial industry’s sweat equity. Together, these wild places ensure it remains number one.
The NYSE’s fast action at the onset of the Covid-19 market sell-off. They accelerated their trade settlement process, reducing the time to settle a trade from two days to one day. This amendment created increased certainty and lowered risk for market participants in turbulent trading days. NYSE’s DMM system years ago seized manual control of the opening and closing auctions. What’s more, they did this at over twice their historical rate, which in turn normalized extreme market volatility.
On April 7 and April 9, the NYSE proved just how strong operational capabilities are. It routed more than 1 trillion processor incoming orders to purchase or trade shares within a single day. The median processing time for these incoming orders was incredibly fast, near 30 microseconds on average. This extraordinary efficiency has garnered the interest of financial markets internationally. You’d be hard pressed not to see the NYSE’s trading floor making the front pages of newspapers from New York to Tokyo.
“The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.” – Henry Ford
The NYSE has been and continues to be fiercely innovative and nimble in order to stay ahead of the market needs. Its systems are designed to manage unprecedented levels and ensure a fair and ordered marketplace for all participants. The exchange’s pledge to keep raising the bar and always innovate technologically has put it at the heart of global finance.
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