The space they had was too big, and was a waste of money. The new space allows them room for expansion. Plus the building has alot of vacancies, so in case they start to grow quickly again, it won't be a problem to rent more space as needed.
There are other costs involved. You either have to be a NYSE member, own a seat, or you have to , don't know the exact term, lease a seat, which I believe runs somewhere in the several hundred thousand range. There in the process of either leasing a line from another clearing firm, or leasing a seat. They are in the negotiating stages.
Like most other trading firms, they found the recruiting for offices in the suburbs, wasn't easy, and they're consolidating everything within the vicinity of major cities, where recruiting is alot easier.
It's the execution software we use at Hold. Funny name, LOL. Sounds more like a sports car. You mean like Gregg's Ferrari he got from overcharging traders??? Well, the word on the street was Tradescape.com tried to buy or merge with Hold Bro before the idiots at Etrade decided to buy them out. TS and Hold tried to pull off that MKXT scam together and look where it got them. I thing I do have to say is that the jersey city office is very nice, but nice and empty. my 2 cents. Omar
SLK is one of the most expensive clearing firms on the street. Instinet is alot cheaper, that's why there finally able to lower their traders commissions.
Look at most firms in those days, they all charged absorbent commissions, but no one cared at the time because stocks were moving points at a time. Unfortunately for Hold, they didn't adjust the commission rates down when stocks stopped moving in points. When I started in this business, I was paying close to 2 cents with tickets, and over close 7 cents for bullets. I sat next some great traders at Worldco who were paying over a penny a share, and 7 cents for bullets, and they were doing well over 100K a day, and 20K in bullets. But even they didn't complain until the market got tougher.