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Non-Tech : Ashton Technology (ASTN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowman who wrote (3694)	3/26/2001 9:15:33 PM
From: Rob W	Respond to of 4443

siliconvalley.com NYSE trying to improve clarity of its quotes NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Stock Exchange, trying to placate big investors complaining about trading in cents, Thursday rolled out a plan to give them a better idea if stocks are available in large amounts at a price close to the current quote. Beginning Monday, the exchange initiative, starting with eight stocks, will let market data providers flag quotes for stocks in which there are bids or offers for more than 20,000 shares within a range of 15 cents of the quoted price. Under the current system, NYSE specialist firms can change quotes by making a slightly better offer for a smaller number of shares to mask a larger order. For example, a mutual fund selling 20,000 shares of Qwest Communications International Inc. might offer them at $37 each, but a specialist could step in, offering to sell only 500 shares at $36.99 -- a penny improvement. The 20,000 share order would still exist, but would not be visible to the market. That means the fund would not know what price the shares would sell at and other buyers would think Qwest was going for $36.99 a share. ``There was a desire expressed (by institutional investors) to get a better look at market depth in this new decimal environment,'' said an NYSE spokesman. The initiative, which the NYSE calls ``depth indications,'' will first be used for trading in the shares of Qwest, Avaya Inc., Lucent Technologies Inc., Gateway Inc. , Black & Decker Corp., Tupperware Corp. , Franklin Resources Inc. and Sears. The plan will by March 28 be extended to include 427 NYSE- listed stocks in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the 20 most active non-U.S. stocks. The exchange also plans to introduce technology in June that will show all of their specialists' real-time bids and offers. ``You would punch in a stock symbol and then you would see the bids and offers -- all of them -- away from the best bids and offers,'' the NYSE spokesman added. Government regulators pushed for the change to decimals because they believed it would give investors better share prices by narrowing the spreads, or the difference between what a buyer and a seller asked for a stock. Nasdaq, the No. 2 U.S. stock market, began switching to decimals from the traditional fractions March 12, with full decimalization set for the SEC's deadline of April 9. The New York Stock Exchange and the smaller American Stock Exchange began their decimal conversion program in August and shifted all stocks to pennies in January. # # #