The New York Stock Exchange wants to attract a new generation of traders with its US$3 million Interactive Center. With touch-screen kiosks, terminals for real-time trading information, and "smart cards" to translate the experience into six different languages, the NYSE has radically revamped its visitors center to appeal to cyber-savvy kids.
"This is a wonderful chance for the stock exchange to educate students," NYSE chairman and CEO Richard Grasso said at a news conference to inaugurate the site Tuesday afternoon. "And, of course, we'd like to reach [the] potential investors."
The visitor center revamp forms part of an NYSE push to publicize shiny technology not only in the center, but on the floor of the NYSE itself. "In the past three years, the NYSE has undergone a $125 million technological remake," says Ray Pellecchia, a spokesman at the NYSE, "and this brings [the center] much closer in line to the trading floor now."
Crowded with rows of terminals, phones, and a running market newsfeed, the free center overlooks the buzzing trading floor. The traders' display books dangle over the visitors with screens of current stock movement. Within the next month, the NYSE will add a walk-through virtual tour of the trading floor.
But all the talk of major advances can seem ironic considering that, compared to the Nasdaq, the hide-bound NYSE carries few tech-industry stocks. Children were disappointed when they couldn't find familiar names like Apple and Microsoft. The tour nimbly neglects to mention even the existence of the Nasdaq or American Stock Exchange.
Using the center's system, the third graders in Yvonne Chen's P.S. 122 class in Chinatown tracked the big hitters: Mattel, Kmart, and McDonald's. The terminals provide real-time stock updates and backgrounds on their performance, teaching children about market ups and downs. When asked why Mattel's stock dropped recently, one answered, "Because it wasn't doing very well" Another ventured, "Because [the Cabbage Patch doll] was eating people's hair."
The NYSE is hardly the first to juxtapose simulated experiences against the real thing in hopes of reaching younger audiences. Most recently, the Museum of Natural History set up computer terminals throughout its dinosaur exhibit, and visitors could browse a Corbis CD-ROM alongside its DaVinci Codex exhibit.
The verdict on the NYSE center is still unclear, even with adults. "[The new computers] are just like ATMs," said Chen, "but it's still a little over [kids'] heads." A rep from the NYSE agrees. "If they were just to walk in without any background," says Lind Riefberg, an attorney at NYSE, "it would be lost on them."
From the Wired News NY bureau at FEED magazine.
