Anne Murphy

Trading Places: Are You Ready for an Electronic Stock Exchange?

Wunsch Auction Systems aims to create an electronic stock market exchange.

 

Back to the future on Wall Street? Wunsch Auction Systems aims to re-create an old-fashioned stock market -- no dealers, no brokers, just buyers and sellers trading at the same price, same place, same time -- but through a new electronic exchange. Launched in April by former broker R. Steven Wunsch, it hosts off-hours auctions 10 times a week, allowing buyers and sellers to place orders directly by computer, eliminating the middlemen's high commissions. Wunsch's exchange charges a penny-per-share fee, compared with the 6¢ to 16¢ investors might pay brokers. Currently restricted to institutional investors, the exchange already deals in 3,000 stocks, and an average day's volume is 120,000 shares.