NYSE vs. Nasdaq battle heats up

A lot of people have been focused on the NYSE's and the Nasdaq's forays abroad recently. That has masked what some see as an increasingly bitter battle waged for domestic business. Truth be told, this sort of low-intensity battle has been perennially waged--they always vie for issuers. The battle is still meaningful, but there are other trends worth watching. The fact is that their biggest competitors may be third-party execution services that people like to call "dark books." Also, one cannot ignore the plans of top Wall Street broker dealers to control their own order flow and executions. I think we're on the verge of a historic fragmentation of order execution services. The exchanges will have to respond at some point. The danger is that they are seen as basically commodity services providers.

For more:
- here's an article about listing battles from USA Today