Hi, I'll be visting New York in early September. I've read that they no longer do tours of the NYSE (due to security reasons) - does anyone know of any other way to get in there and check it out? What about checking out NYMEX? Thanks, GM
The only way to get a tour of the NYSE is to have a floor trader sign you in and escort you around. Know any? If you wait a bit, the trading floor will have finished it's conversion to a museum and be open to the public. As to NYMEX, they no longer have an observation room open to public. However, there is a way to tour, but you have to go in, get screened, and then someone will give you a very abbreviated tour. But hurry up, NYMEX is looking to sell/merge with NYSE and close and sell the building in due order.
Thanks for the info, anyone have any other tips for visiting any of the exchanges in NYC?? They seem to have closed doors :|
This article from the nypost. As far as I can tell the only way to get a tour is if you have funds with a broker and they offer up a tour, which I think is the case in the article below. The only other thought I had or you might try, is if you have an American Express Card, I believe they have a members forum you can ask there or ask concierge service. TRADERS SAY NYSE FLOOR STILL HOT VENUE - FOR TOURISTS By JOHN AIDAN BYRNE May 20, 2007 -- The Big Apple has a new and fast-growing tourist attraction: the New York Stock Exchange. No, not the visitors gallery at the Big Board, which has been on tourists' maps for years, but the storied floor of the exchange. With the number of pros on the floor of the exchange cut by as much as two-thirds from just a few years ago, and with floor traders much less busy than they once were (they handle just 18 percent of NYSE trades compared to 86 percent of trades 17 months ago, thanks to electronic trading), some are using their floor access to show customers around. One of the pros now leading these "tours" is John O'Shea, the chairman and CEO of Westminster Securities, who earlier this year finally realized his career-long goal of qualifying as a floor broker. With the qualification, O'Shea, 50, can now escort visitors around the floor. He finds Westminster's clients are awe-struck at the NYSE's hybrid system. "It has worked out well, especially for our non-U.S. clients, who are really enthused," O'Shea told The Post. "I've brought dozens of people down on the floor tour." The tours would have been impossible years ago when the NYSE floor was jam-packed with 5,000 traders, specialists and clerks. Today, as electronic trading has eaten into the number of people needed to work on the floor, the floor of the Big Board is nearly empty - as one can see watching CNBC. Just 1,500 trading pros are spread out on the vast floor. On Wednesday - as the Dow hit a record new high - this reporter went down to the floor, seeing how times have changed. Floor traders have more time to talk casually with outsiders, as computers in the background quietly execute stock orders. The floor is emptying fast - the old mad dash activity and noise in the crowd is gone - and the remaining stalwarts worry about the future. "The best-paid traders are lucky to take home $200,000 a year," said one dejected floor pro. "Back (five or six years ago), some people were each pulling in $1 million a year," he said. "Hybrid is a lie - there's no profitable role for human traders here." Jonathan "Nat" Niles, a veteran floor broker, said the outlook is disturbing. "If the exchange is not careful, this place will become just a tourist attraction." O'Shea thinks that's already happening. "We can now bring down four people at a time, when in the past it used to be just two," he said. "There's more free space."