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http://www.iht.com/articles/51693.html
Cheap seats on the floor
Elizabeth Reed Smith The New York Times
Tuesday, March 19, 2002
Prices plunge for options exchange membership
NEW YORK The value of seats on U.S. options exchanges has been plunging.
Traders who paid as much as $19,500 a month to do business on the American
Stock Exchange in August 2000 are now signing leases for as little as $1,500 a
month.
The price declines have been distressing for people who bought the seats as
investments, expecting them to appreciate. "This is a painful period we're
enduring," said Paul Liang, who manages PBL Partners, a fund based in Chicago
that invests in seats on options exchanges. The fund's value has plummeted to
$14.7 million from $70 million at its peak in 1999, he said.
Ownership of seats has become less desirable because of the protracted bear
market, competition among exchanges, the birth of an electronic market and
shifts in trading practices that make options prices more transparent. But
those same changes, people in the industry say, may benefit individual
investors by cutting trading costs.
[...]
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