The Wall Street Journal-20080215-Program Trading

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Program Trading

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NEW YORK -- Program trading in the week ended Feb. 8 amounted to 26.5% of New York Stock Exchange average daily volume of 4.27 billion shares, or 1.13 billion program shares traded per day.

Program trading encompasses a range of portfolio-trading strategies involving the purchase or sale of a basket of at least 15 stocks with a total value of $1 million or more. The program-trading level is buying-and-selling volume as a percent of all NYSE reported volume.

In all markets, program trading by member firms averaged 2.75 billion shares a day during the past week. About 41.2% of program trading took place on the NYSE, 1.3% in non-U.S. markets and 57.5% in other domestic markets, including Nasdaq, the American Stock Exchange and regional markets.

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NYSE PROGRAM TRADING

Volume in millions of shares for the week ended

Feb. 8, 2008

INDEX DERIVATIVE- OTHER

TOP 15 FIRMS ARBITRAGE RELATED* STRATEGIES TOTAL

Lehman Brothers 48.3 ..... 876.7 925.0

Goldman Sachs ..... ..... 879.8 879.8

Credit Suisse Sec. 2.2 ..... 582.4 584.6

Morgan Stanley 11.8 ..... 567.5 579.3

Merrill Lynch ..... ..... 500.1 500.1

Deutsche Bank Sec. 87.8 ..... 307.3 395.1

Bear Stearns 10.7 ..... 301.4 312.1

UBS Sec. ..... ..... 299.4 299.4

RBC Capital Markets 26.0 ..... 271.3 297.3

Banc of America Sec. 10.3 ..... 192.8 203.1

BNP Paribas Bkrg. Srvs. ..... ..... 160.5 160.5

SIG Brokerage ..... ..... 82.1 82.1

SG Americas Sec. 4.2 ..... 51.9 56.1

Interactive Brokers ..... ..... 54.6 54.6

Jefferies Execution Srvs. 15.5 ..... 37.0 52.5

OVERALL TOTAL 230.8 ..... 5,430.1 5,660.9

*Other derivative-related strategies besides index arbitrage

Source: New York Stock Exchange