PSE Considers Opening a Trading Floor in Honolulu
The Pacific Stock Exchange is studying opening a trading floor in Honolulu, a move that could help the exchange expand links with the burgeoning Asian stock markets and lead to 24-hour trading through exchanges for the first time.
Pacific Stock Exchange Chairman Maurice Mann said Friday that the exchange has agreed to a joint six-month feasibility study at the initiative of a task force set up by Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi.
“We’re serious as hell, and they’re serious as hell,” Mann said in an interview.
A Honolulu floor, if pursued, would be the third for the Pacific exchange, which already operates ones in Los Angeles and San Francisco--the only U.S. exchange to have multiple equity floors. Opening a third floor would not pose any communications problems because the PSE already has state of the art technology linking its two equity floors, Mann said.
A Honolulu floor also could allow the PSE to extend trading hours until the opening of Asian markets, while enhancing its attempts to pursue joint ventures or other links with exchanges in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and other Asian financial centers. About 50 stocks currently trade on both the New York Stock Exchange and the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and many of those also trade on the Pacific, Mann said.
The PSE currently ends its trading at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time, leaving a 3 1/2-hour gap until the all-important Tokyo market opens at 5 p.m. PST. Honolulu is two or three hours behind PST, depending on the time of year.
A new floor also could help Hawaii’s drive to gain greater stature as a financial services center, brought on by its declining agricultural industry and desire to develop other major industries beyond its bread-and-butter tourism.
However, Mann acknowledged that many details would have to be ironed out. It is not clear how willing the PSE’s member firms, or brokerage firms in Asia, might be willing to support another exchange and direct trades to it.
“We’re not clear exactly how we will do it,” Mann said.
