NEW YORK — While executives were finishing a deal to sell the New York Stock Exchange to a German rival, the NYSE was locked in a separate, smaller battle with three dozen competitors. The prize was the right to deliver shares of Coca-Cola stock to an investor who wanted 400 of them.
The NYSE lost.
The exchange is losing a lot these days. The icon of American capitalism hopes that combining with another exchange will give it heft to reverse its fallen fortunes. Competition is so keen to handle stock orders now that the difference between winning and losing frequently comes down to pennies — in the case of the Coke trade, a few hundredths of a penny.
Lime Brokerage in Manhattan placed an order to buy 400 shares of Coke at the request of The Associated Press. In 150 millionths of a second, the order traveled 2 1/2 miles to Jersey City, N.J., and a $7,000 computer server no bigger than a DVD player that can juggle orders for more than a million shares every second.
A few hundredths of a second after the Coke request arrived, the server got offers from three dozen exchanges and other trading venues looking to sell shares. The lowest price came from the Kansas contender, BATS Exchange. Co-founded in 2005 by a former executive for a health care diagnostic company, BATS offered to sell shares for $63.05 apiece, minus a rebate of 27 one-hundredths of a penny.
The NYSE didn’t stand a chance. It wanted 12 one-hundredths of a cent more. The Associated Press
