Wall Street Goes Public

Over 200 years ago people gathered under a tree near one end of Wall Street and traded securities. From those quaint beginnings, the New York Stock Exchange rose to become the most prominent exchange in the world and now you can own a piece of it. For years that privilege was only available if you had some serious coin and one of the 1,366 seat holders was willing to sell. Now, for about $72 plus fees, you can buy a share of the stock exchange, which trades under the symbol of NYX (NYSE would have been much cooler, but only stocks on the NASDAQ can use four-letter symbols... and we're not going to say that "NYX" looks like it sounds like "Knicks" and what that would mean ) - the stock has risen 13% since this morning.

Now before you rush in and buy, consider that this exchange is the same one that gave Dick Grasso a $200 million retirement payout and that the value of seats on the exchange went from $1 million to $6 million since last April. Also, ownership doesn’t mean you can walk around the exchange floor and fire people, though this does bring up promising video game licensing ideas.