New York : Broker units of Barclays and Goldman Sachs will soon make markets in Nasdaq-listed stocks on the trading floor of NYSE Amex, according to Joe Mecane, executive vice president for US markets at NYSE Euronext, which operates the exchange.
NYSE Amex expects to start trading companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market early in the second quarter, Mecane said. The exchange is waiting for approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The move will give Manhattan-based NYSE Euro-next a second platform on which to trade Nasdaq stocks and gain market share by appealing to a wider range of investors. The New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Amex are the sole venues that currently trade only their own companies.
"There's nothing sacred about NYSE or Nasdaq stocks trading on the exchange that listed them," said Richard Repetto, exchanges and brokers analyst at Sandler O'Neill & Partners LP in New York. "You can tell that by the loss of market share by the namesake exchanges."
Five years ago the NYSE dominated trading in companies it lists, with 79 per cent of that market, according to the SEC. Now the exchange gets a quarter of the volume, according to data from Barclays.
The Big Board and NYSE Arca together traded 36.5 per cent of NYSE-listed volume last month. Nasdaq OMX Group's two equities markets accounted for 33.9 per cent of the volume in its own listed securities, the Barclays data showed. Nasdaq OMX is based in New York.
NYSE Euronext already trades Nasdaq securities on its electronic NYSE Arca platform. Amex, which it bought in 2008, gives the company another venue for these shares with different trading rules and customer incentives. Amex trades electronically and on the exchange floor, which it shares with the Big Board.
