Twitter's Share Price Soars At NYSE Launch

Smooth Sailing For 'TWTR' Launch

Updated: 11:34pm UK, Thursday 07 November 2013

By Hannah Thomas-Peter, New York Correspondent

The "pop" at the beginning of the day prompted some early investors to sell a portion of their shares.

Meridian Equity Partners trader Jonathan Corpina said: "I have a client right now who bought some of the stock on the IPO and wants to sell some of it out right now.

"They like the pricing and they like the gain that they've seen so far."

Public trading began after a prolonged period known as "price discovery", when experienced traders known as "designated market makers" sift through orders, assess new demands, coordinate between Twitter, its investment banks and other traders to try and decide on a fair opening price.

Anticipation built on the floor of the exchange as a large group of traders converged at the trading post, some shouting orders out to the market makers.

It took well over an hour for the price to be agreed and trading to start.

Sources close to the deal told the Reuters news agency that investors were asking for 30 times the number of shares on offer.

As the market makers shouted "we're getting close" to an agreed price, a cheer went out across the floor.

One trader puffed out his cheeks and said to himself "here we go".

Mr Corpina said: "It's a lot of fun, the energy the excitement in the room, the information flow, the trading, it really gets your heart pounding and this is what we do this for."

In the short term, the NYSE seems to have avoided the technical glitches that plagued rival exchange NASDAQ's ill-fated launch of Facebook last year.

NYSE head of capital markets David Ethridge told Sky News the smooth IPO was in part due to the designated market makers, which are unique to the NYSE and have the power to trade without the computerised system if anything goes wrong, as well as the authority to step in with their own company's money if trading becomes too volatile.

He said: "This is a process that requires judgement and not just a computer algorithm to get it right, because a stock never trades just on valuation when it starts trading.

"It trades on sentiment, and you need a person to figure out what's the sentiment; How do people feel about the stock? How do people feel about the economy? That's all part of the process of getting it right."

Still though, the team of market makers from Barclays Capital looked relieved when it became clear this day at least, had gone without any noticeable hitches.

I asked them if it had been nerve wracking

Team head Patrick Murphy said: "No, it was business as usual. This is what we do. There were a lot of eyes on this and we had to get it right."

But Barclays head of electronic trading William White responded: "Yes. You always have that anxiety about hitting the button. You don't want to be in the position where there are technology glitches, but this one was seamless."

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