The Big Board Just Lost Its First Customer To Texas
Texas Capital Bancshares came out today and said it's pulling two exchange-traded funds off NYSE Arca...
...and running them over to the Texas Stock Exchange instead.
TXS and OILT, first primary listings that young exchange has ever landed.
The move kicks in next month.
Sounds small.
Two ETFs, one regional bank, a paperwork switch.
I don't buy it as small, not for one second.
Here's why.
The Texas Stock Exchange only opened for trading in July...
...and it walked in with more than $250 million behind it...
...and the names writing those checks aren't some gang of gamblers hunting a lottery ticket.
BlackRock's in it.
Citadel Securities is in it.
Charles Schwab is in it.
JPMorgan put money down in the second round.
Those are outfits that read order flow and market structure for a living, year after year...
...not men chasing a headline.
So when 4 of the biggest financial institutions on the planet bankroll a brand new exchange...
...and that exchange lands its first primary listing win inside 6 weeks of opening its doors...
...that's not a coincidence I can shrug off and walk away from.
The New York Stock Exchange has run this country's listing business for 2 centuries running...
...no serious homegrown rival since Nasdaq showed up back in 1971.
That's the stat that stops me cold.
55 years.
And now a Dallas exchange with lighter board rules and a plain pitch on cost...
...has gone and taken its first customer...
...tiny as it is...
...straight off NYSE's own ledger.
I keep hearing folks wave it off, just two ETFs from a regional Texas bank...
...exactly the kind of client you'd expect to make a hometown move first.
Fair point.
But every big name on top gets tested the same way.
Small, easy to laugh off, close to home.
And 6 months down the road it's not a headline anymore, it's a pattern.
What gets me, sitting here today...
...with the 30-year Treasury yield parked at its highest mark since 2007 and oil running past 85 dollars a barrel...
...is how much hunger for change is loose in this market right now.
Rates unsettled.
Energy unsettled.
And now even the plumbing under the stock market, the exchanges themselves, up for grabs.
TXSE's already planning to add exchange traded product listings this quarter, corporate listings by year end.
And if even a handful of the 82 institutions that put equity into this thing decide to list...
...where they put their own money...
...NYSE has got itself a competitive problem it hasn't faced in over half a century.
I don't know if TXSE grows into a legitimate rival or just ends up a footnote...
...next to the bigger stories about bonds and chips.
But the first domino fell today...
...and it fell on a day when almost every eye in this market was pinned on the 30-year yield...
...and the semiconductor selloff instead.
And that's usually the hour the story that matters most is the one pulling the least attention.