The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) was once one of the biggest and most popular stock exchanges in the United States.
The NYSE had some of the biggest listed companies and its trading volumes in the 1990s surpassed all the other exchanges in the countries.
However, the NYSE fell behind as it failed to keep up with the latest technology and competitors like Bats and Nasdaq gained prominence and outdid the NYSE. The NYSE over the last decade has tried different strategies to boost its trading volumes but has met with little success.
The NYSE is one of the few stock exchanges in the US that still runs a trading floor. When it tried to switch over to electronic trading, there were a few hiccups. The exchange decided to acquire Archipelago Holdings – an electronic trading platform in 2006 to upgrade its systems. That worked for some time but soon the NYSE fell behind as competitors had better financial platforms that providers customers with faster speeds and won their business over.
The exchange has tinkered with its systems over the last few years in an effort to not upset the apple cart and keep business as usual. However, the time has finally come for the NYSE to take the plunge and make a major overhaul to its trading systems.
The NYSE has been working on Project Pillar for a number of months that will look to upgrade its stock and options trading platforms and help the NYSE to compete with the rest of the major exchanges in the country. This is not the first time that the NYSE has experimented with Project Pillar. There have been smaller upgrades made in the past but not all of them have been successful.
This time around the NYSE remains hopeful that Project Pillar will be able to implement major fundamental changes successfully and traders will not face any interruptions or system glitches.
Speed Of Transactions To Improve
The top stock exchanges are always looking to implement new technology that gives their traders the ability to process transactions at a faster speed. To give you an idea of these speeds, Cboe processes transactions at 56 microseconds and Nasdaq processes transactions at 35 microseconds.
The NYSE currently processes transactions on its main exchange at around 120 microseconds. When the Pillar upgrade is completed, transaction times are expected to drop to 40 microseconds.
