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Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (trading symbol APC); Forest City Enterprises Inc. Class A (FCE A); Forest City Enterprises Inc. Class B (FCE B); FedEx Corp. (FDX); Gateway Inc. (GTW); Hughes Supply Inc. (HUG); MSC.Software Corp. (MNS).
The NYSE chose the stocks based on several criteria that the Exchange developed with a securities-industry committee, of which the NYSE is a member. These criteria included choosing stocks that have varying levels of daily trading activity, at least one stock that is traded on multiple exchanges, at least one that is part of an index, at least one that is an underlying issue for multiply listed options; and at least one that has a possible corporate action pending. For ease of implementation, all of the stocks are assigned to one workstation at the specialist firm of Spear, Leeds & Kellogg.
The starting date for the pilot will be announced following SEC approval. In the pilot, stocks will be priced in dollars and cents instead of fractions of 1/16 of a dollar. The minimum pricing increment will be one penny. After approximately one month, the pilot will expand to include approximately 50 stocks. Approximately 60 days after that, the NYSE and the securities industry will conduct an extensive evaluation of the pilot results, after which decimal pricing will be extended to all NYSE-listed stocks.
The NYSE has been decimal ready since April, and has been working closely with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the industry on the implementation plans. The NYSE's board approved conversion to decimal pricing in June 1997 -- the first U.S. securities market to take that step - with the goal of making prices more easily understood by investors, and bringing the United States into conformity with international practices.
