NYSE Dims the Lights to Attract Trading

For the past decade, the New York Stock Exchange (NYX) has watched its share of trading volume slowly erode. While a lot of that volume simply vanished as individual investors pulled an estimated $300 billion out of U.S. equity mutual funds since 2009, plenty of it was grabbed by upstart competitors: Public exchanges Direct Edge and BATS, launched in 2005 and 2006, respectively, now account for a combined 17 percent of all equity trading volume in the U.S. Today the NYSE handles about 22 percent, down from around 80 percent in the late 1990s.