Glossary
New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)
The largest US stock exchange by listed company value, located at 11 Wall Street in New York and dating to 1792.
On this page
The New York Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in the world by the total market value of the companies listed on it. Its origins trace to the Buttonwood Agreement signed by 24 brokers in 1792, and its trading floor at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan is the image most people picture when they think of the stock market. Since 2013 it has been owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).
How the NYSE trades
The NYSE is a hybrid market: most trading is electronic, but a trading floor remains. Each listed stock is assigned a designated market maker (DMM), a firm responsible for maintaining a fair and orderly market and for running the opening and closing auctions, which match large numbers of buy and sell orders at a single price. Floor brokers can still represent large client orders in person. The closing auction has become one of the busiest moments of the trading day, because index funds and other institutions want to trade at the official closing price.
The NYSE family
ICE runs several US equity exchanges under the NYSE name, each with its own rules and listings: NYSE American for smaller companies, NYSE Arca (where many ETFs list and which runs early and late electronic sessions), NYSE National and NYSE Texas. The core NYSE session runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. ET on trading days, and in 2026 the market is closed on ten holidays, from New Year's Day to Christmas.