Texas is building a stock exchange to take on Wall Street heavyweights
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Don’t mess with Texstocks… The Lone Star State wants to open its first national stock exchange. Backed by major Wall Street firms like BlackRock and Citadel, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) has raised $120M and plans to file with the SEC this year and launch in 2026. Regional stock exchanges (ones outside a country’s financial hub) have been around for ages, but the US has only a handful outside NYC (like: Chicago, Philadelphia). Texas has even bigger goals of taking on Wall Street, America’s financial supercenter and home to the Nasdaq and NYSE, the two largest US exchanges.
Clear eyes, full trades: The TXSE, which would be fully electronic and HQ’d in Dallas, hopes to capitalize on the market rebound. Nearly $14B has been raised in US market debuts this year, up 3x from last year.
Big dreams: TXSE hopes to attract listings with “CEO-friendly” standards like lower compliance costs. It said businesses were frustrated with stringent listing rules (it mentioned the Nasdaq’s board-diversity targets).
Houston, we have a profit… For years Texas has attracted corporate biggies, thanks largely to its lack of income taxes and more relaxed regulatory environment (the Tex-conomy is red hot). After California, Texas is tied with New York as the state hosting the most Fortune 500 companies (Tesla and Oracle are a few with Texas addresses). Last year, Goldman Sachs began construction on an 800K-square-foot Dallas campus that can hold ~5K employees. JPMorgan Chase has also been an advocate of Texas’ business-friendly environment, and now employs 30K workers in the state — more than in its New York hub.
It’s tough being a small fish in a small pond… TXSE execs say their exchange could create more competition in a market dominated by the NYSE and Nasdaq. But attracting new listings could be tough since many companies want to trade on big exchanges with high volumes and liquidity. While regional exchanges often have more niche focuses (think: the CBOE and options), Texas’ goal to take on Wall Street trading is ambitious.