NYSE to Flesh Out Plan for Electronic Platform

The New York Stock Exchange expects to file a plan with regulators to expand its electronic trading platform, Direct+, within a few weeks, NYSE Chief Executive John A. Thain told Congress on Wednesday.

The NYSE has been under pressure to flesh out a brief proposal it submitted in February to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is considering ways to update America’s aging national stock market system.

Electronic rivals to the NYSE are pushing for new rules that would give them more business, while the NYSE is trying to defend its dominant position.

Some institutional investors are complaining that order executions on the NYSE trading floor -- the world’s last major stock market still dominated by human traders -- are too slow. In response, the NYSE has been working for months on expanding its faster, automated, electronic Direct+ system.