The Philadelphia Stock Exchange: Adapting to Survive in Changing Markets
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Swarthmore College Works Economics Faculty Works Economics 2004 The Philadelphia Stock Exchange: Adapting To Survive In Changing Markets John P. Caskey Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-economics Part of the Economics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation John P. Caskey. (2004). "The Philadelphia Stock Exchange: Adapting To Survive In Changing Markets". Business History Review. Volume 78, Issue 3. 451-487. DOI: 10.2307/25096909 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-economics/1 This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Philadelphia Stock Exchange: Adapting to Survive in Changing Markets Author(s): John P. Caskey Source: The Business History Review, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 451-487 Published by: The President and Fellows of Harvard College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25096909 . Accessed: 17/07/2014 14:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The President and Fellows of Harvard College is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Business History Review. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:21:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions John P. Caskey The Philadelphia Stock Exchange: Adapting to Survive in Changing Markets This article analyzes the evolution of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), America's oldest stock exchange, from 1950 through 2000. PHLX was able to compete against the much larger New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) because it exploited loopholes created by fixed minimum trading commissions prior to 1975. After the liberalization of commissions, the PHLX competed against the NYSE by offering automated exe cutions that met the needs of discount brokers. It also moved early to trade equity options and developed the first exchange based market for foreign currency options. evolution of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) during a The the second half of the twentieth century constitutes compelling story for several reasons. For one, very little has been written about the regional stock exchanges, and even many financial economists are uncertain about what they do and why they do it. By focusing on one particular regional exchange, I can provide a rich account of its opera tions and business strategies. At the same time, since most of the other surviving regional exchanges shared many of the characteristics of the PHLX, an account of its evolution provides a perspective on the JOHN P. CASKEY is professor in the Department of Economics at Swarthmore College. I conducted much of the research for this paper while I was a visiting scholar in the Re search Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. I am grateful to that institu tion for its support. I also thank three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. In conducting the background research for this paper, I greatly benefited from insights pro vided by George Arnold, Albert Brinkman, Eleanor Myers, Lisa Polsky, Joseph Rizzello, Arnold Staloff, Bill Terrell, and four individuals who served as chief executives of the PHLX during the period examined in this paper: Elkins Wetherill (1965-1981), Nicholas Giordano (1981-1997), Leopold Korins (1997-1998), and Meyer S. Frucher (1998-present). I thank the staff of the PHLX, and Joseph Keslar in particular, for providing me with access to the minutes from the 1961-85 meetings of the PHLX board of directors. These individuals and institutions are not, or course, responsible for any errors in this paper and they do not neces sarily agree with my account of the factors involved in the evolution of the PHLX. Business History Review 78 (Autumn 2004): 451-487. ? 2004 by The Pres ident and Fellows of Harvard College. This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:21:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions John P. Caskey / 452 development of the regional exchanges generally. In addition, an analy sis of the progressive transformation of the PHLX necessarily entails background profiles of the many profound changes in the structure of securities markets that occurred in the second half of the twentieth cen tury. Finally, the evolution of the PHLX is in itself a fascinating case study of business strategy and adaptation to major competitive and regulatory shocks. In examining this half-century in the history of the PHLX, I iden tify three distinct periods. The first runs from the 1950s through 1974.1 begin in the 1950s in order to capture the postwar characteristics of the regional stock exchanges and the challenges they faced in attracting or ders away from the New York Stock Exchange. I end the first period in 1974, because this is the last year that exchanges could, and did, specify minimum commissions that nonmembers had to pay in order to trade on the exchanges. In addition, during this period, the PHLX only traded equities, not the options that became important to it in later years. The second period begins in 1975 and ends in 1983. This is an era of great innovation for the PHLX, as it introduced automated routing and exe cution of retail equity trades and began to trade equity options, equity index options, and foreign-currency options. The third period runs from 1984 through 2000. During this era, while the PHLX enjoyed the benefits of its earlier diversification into options, it also had to confront new regulatory and competitive threats to the successful market niches it had created. Before telling the story of the evolution of the PHLX, Iwill explain a recurring theme in this account. Economic theory would tend to pre dict that there would be only one exchange to trade any particular secu rity or group of securities, in large part because securities markets are subject to "network effects."1 This simply means that people buying (or selling) a security will generally want to go to the market center where the largest number of others are selling (or buying) the same security. By following this strategy, they maximize their chances of receiving the best price and completing the transaction quickly. This point, which is often summed up by the phrase "liquidity attracts liquidity," has impor tant implications. If an exchange, for example, gains a dominant mar ket share in trading a particular security, all trading of the security may quickly move to that market. In other words, network effects can create natural monopolies for securities exchanges. In determining which exchange becomes the location for trading a particular security, there is 1 For a clear, nontechnical discussion of network efforts in trading systems and factors af fecting competition among markets, see Larry Harris, Trading and Exchanges: Market Mi crostructure for Practitioners (New York, 2003). This content downloaded from 130.58.65.13 on Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:21:19 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Philadelphia Stock Exchange / 453 a "first mover" advantage. The exchange that first gains a dominant market share, perhaps because it is the first to trade the security, is more likely to become the monopoly center than later entrants. Over the course of the half-century that I examine here, the Phila delphia stock exchange managed to survive, and sometimes to thrive, while capturing only a relatively minor share of total national trading of exchange-listed stocks and equity options. If network effects are signif icant, one would expect it to have folded as trading migrated to far larger market centers, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for exchange-listed equities and the Chicago Board Options Exchange for exchange-traded options. Why didn't this happen? In what follows, I explain how the PHLX was able to compete against these much larger rivals. But to summarize the answer at the outset, a number of factors came into play, including high communica tion costs in the PHLX's earliest years; restrictive membership and list ing standards on the NYSE; efforts by institutions to evade fixed trad ing commissions; a differentiation of trading technologies to appeal to particular order-flow providers; government regulations and, perhaps, implicit collusion among exchanges that allowed them to monopolize the trading of specific equity option contracts; and the development of new products that were not traded on other exchanges. All these fac tors have, at different times, accounted for the ability of the PHLX to overcome the network effects that would otherwise undermine the ability of a small securities exchange to coexist alongside much larger exchanges.2 Before exploring the three distinct eras in the history of the PHLX outlined above, Iwill set the context for the 1950s by briefly reviewing the evolution of the PHLX prior to that time. The Early Years The Philadelphia Stock Exchange dates its founding to the 1790 li censing of the Philadelphia Board of Brokers, making it the oldest stock 2 For a theoretical discussion of sources of competitive advantage and the implications for see business strategies, Michael E.