NYSE Membership

The NYSE is the only market to offer both high-tech automation for low latency and complete anonymity along with high-touch participation by market professionals to provide orderly opens and closes, lower volatility, deeper liquidity and price improvement opportunities throughout the trading day. This unique combination provides customers with the highest levels of market quality and competitiveness.

The NYSE next-generation trading model includes three key market participants: Designated Market Makers (who have succeeded Specialists); Trading Floor Brokers, with new tools; and the new Supplemental Liquidity Providers.

Designated Market Makers
Designated Market Makers (DMMs) are the only participants in any market who have true accountability for maintaining a fair and orderly market. DMMs:

• Combine both a physical auction managed by DMMs and a completely automated auction that includes algorithmic quotes from DMMs and other market participants;
  
  
• Have the obligation to maintain an orderly market in their stocks, quote at the national best bid or offer a specified percentage of the time, and facilitate price discovery throughout the day as well as at the open, close and in periods of significant imbalances;
  
  
• Provide price improvement and match incoming orders based on a pre-programmed Capital Commitment Schedule, which has been added to the NYSE Display Book, minimizing order latency. DMMs and their algorithms do not receive a “look” at incoming orders. This ensures that an intermediary does not see orders first, and that DMMs compete as a market participant;
  
  
• Are on parity with quotes from floor brokers and those on the Display Book, encouraging DMM participation and higher market quality.
  

NYSE Designated Market Maker Firms

NYSE Amex Designated Market Maker Firms

Trading Floor Brokers
Brokers on the NYSE Trading Floor leverage their physical point-of sale-presence with information technologies and order management tools to offer customers the benefits of flexibility, judgment, automation and anonymity with minimal market impact. Trading Floor Brokers:

• Have individual parity with DMMs and the NYSE Display Book, from their e-Broker hand held devices, via e-Quotes or Broker algorithms. Parity allows multiple market participants to share volume according to NYSE’s allocation rules.
  
  
• Have the ability to route all or part of a customer order to an external algo engine from their handheld order-management device. Floor broker algos have been uniquely engineered for the NYSE trading floor environment to trade on parity and may used in combination with other order types. This allows Brokers to offer a balanced blend of technology for fast, automated and anonymous order execution; and a physical marketplace for discovering block-sized liquidity and improving prices.
  
  
• Utilize BlockTalk, an information technology that allows brokers to more efficiently locate deep liquidity. BlockTalk allows Floor Brokers to broadcast and subscribe to specific stocks they have an interest in, creating an opportunity to trade block-sized liquidity that is not accessible electronically. Since the messages contain no specific order information, customers benefit from a discovery process in a secure environment free of impact, information leakage or intermediation.
  
  
• Have the ability to identify, via their hand-held order-management system, buyers and sellers in a stock by badge number and to instant message them directly from the hand-held devise. This further enhances opportunities to locate deep, otherwise non-accessible block liquidity within a physical trading floor environment.
  
  
• Are positioned at the point of sale during openings, closings and unique intra-day occurrences to execute or provide actionable insight in very fluid and dynamic situations.
  

• The pilot SLP program rewards aggressive liquidity suppliers, who complement and add competition to existing quote providers.
  
  
• SLPs are obligated to maintain a bid or offer at the National Best Bid or Offer (NBBO) in each assigned security at least 5 percent of the trading day.
  
  
• The NYSE pays a financial rebate to the SLP when the SLP posts liquidity in an assigned security that executes against incoming orders. This generates more quoting activity, leading to tighter spreads and greater liquidity at each price level.
  
  
• SLPs trade only for their proprietary accounts, not for public customers or on an agency basis.
  
  
• An NYSE staff committee assigns each SLP a cross section of NYSE-listed securities. Multiple SLPs may be assigned to each issue.
  
  
• A member organization cannot act as a Designated Market Maker and SLP in the same security.
  
  
• SLPs have the same publicly available trading information and market data that all other NYSE customers have available to them.
  

NYSE Supplemental Liquidity Providing (SLP) Firms