New York City is the capital of the US securities market. Nearly 6,330 broker-dealers organizations conduct business in the state, with 187,624 employees; 1,172 investment advisory organizations operate in New York. The state is the headquarters for 411 NASDAQ-listed companies, 216 NASDAQ market makers, 92 AMEX-listed companies (over 14% of the nation's total); and is the incorporator of 309 NYSE-listed companies. The top five companies in terms of revenues are: Citigroup, Phillip Morris Companies, AT&T, American International Group, and Texaco.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is by far the largest organized securities market in the nation and the world; over 50 million individual investors and 10,000 institutional investors buy and sell securities issued by nearly 3,085 companies, including 382 foreign companies. There are about 414 firms with 1,366 seats on the NYSE. The exchange began as an agreement among 24 brokers, known as the Buttonwood Agreement, in 1792; the exchange adopted its first constitution in 1817 and took on its present name in 1863. A clear sign of the growth of the NYSE is the development of its communications system. Stock tickers were first introduced in 1867; a faster ticker, installed in 1930, was capable of printing 500 characters a minute. By 1964, this was no longer fast enough, and a 900-character-a-minute ticker was introduced. Annual registered share volume increased from 1.8 billion in 1965 to 7.6 billion in 1978 following the introduction in 1976 of a new data line capable of handling 36,000 characters a minute. In August 2000, the NYSE switched to a decimal system. The New York Futures Exchange was incorporated in 1979 as a wholly owned subsidiary of the NYSE and began trading in 1980. It also deals in options on futures.
The American Stock Exchange (AMEX) is the 2nd leading US securities floor-based market, but the AMEX ranks far below the NYSE in both volume and value of securities. The AMEX traces its origins to the outdoor trading in unlisted securities that began on Wall and Hanover streets in the 1840s, the exchange was organized as the New York Curb Agency in 1908; the exchange moved indoors, but continued to use the hand signals developed by outdoor traders. The AMEX adopted its current name in 1953. Constitutional changes in 1976 for the first time permitted qualified issues to be traded on both the AMEX and the NYSE as well as on other exchanges. This Intermarket Trading System (ITS) began in 1978. In 1996, the hand signals used in trading on the AMEX for over 100 years were replaced by a computerized communication system. AMEX has 661 regular trading members, and 203 options members.
The National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), created in 1971, is a highly active exchange for over-the-counter securities. New York City is also a major center for trading in commodity futures. Leading commodity exchanges are the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange; the New York Cocoa Exchange; the New York Cotton Exchange; the Commodity Exchange, Inc. (COMEX), specializing in gold, silver, and copper futures; and the New York Mercantile Exchange, which trades in futures for potatoes, platinum, palladium, silver coins, beef, and gold, among other items. Bonds may be issued in New York by cities, counties, towns, villages, school districts, and fire districts, as well as by quasi-independent authorities.