Selecting a Stock Exchange
The three major stock exchanges in the United States are the NASDAQ, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). These stock exchanges are all different in the way they operate and their requirements for a company that wants to be listed. Before going public, you will need to decide which stock exchange is right for your company.
The NYSE (www.nyse.com) and the AMEX (www.amex.com) are actual, physical locations in New York City where floor traders make most of the trades through an auction process. If an investor wants to buy or sell stock on the floor of the NYSE or AMEX, a broker (agent) calls in the order to the floor of the exchange. On television, you may have seen pictures of the trading floor where people are yelling, screaming, and wildly waving their hands to place bids. Those people are floor traders who are executing trades on behalf of customers.
The NYSE is the oldest U.S. stock exchange and has traditionally been the home of larger, wealthier, established companies such as General Motors (GM), Coca-Cola (KO), and General Electric (GE). The listing fee to get your company on the NYSE can be as high as $250,000 and annual continual listing fees range as high as $500,000.
The AMEX has been around almost as many years as the NYSE, but tends to attract small to medium-sized businesses, including a lot of oil and gas companies. This exchange also offers opportunities to “micro-sized” companies, allowing them to be listed for an entry fee as low as $5,000 and annual fees of about $11,000
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