New York — The future of the American Stock Exchange looked bright when Ira Koondel arrived in 1969.
A bull market was in full swing and the Amex was packed with traders. So many people worked on the main floor that the exchange had to open an upper level with bleacher seats a few years later.
Another bull market is roaring today, but life at the Amex is quite different.
Traders have slowly left or been fired. The bleachers are all but abandoned. Koondel, 65, operates from a dingy brown booth with three nonworking phones. "We're not particularly interested in how things look because as things change, we may not be here anymore," said Koondel, a heavyset man who wears American flag ties under his colorful trader's smock.
The Amex, like other exchanges, has been hit hard by the spread of electronic trading. Computers increasingly do the work once performed by middlemen. Some regional marketplaces, including the Pacific Stock Exchange in Los Angeles, are gone.
Even the mighty New York Stock Exchange has been forced to evolve. In the last two years, it bought an electronic exchange, converted itself into a publicly traded company and downsized its trading floor. Seeking a global presence, it is acquiring Europe's biggest stock-exchange company and recently struck a trading alliance with the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
The Amex also is trying to reinvent itself, but whether it can succeed is an open question.
For starters, it has long existed in the shadow of the NYSE, where the stocks of such corporate titans as General Electric Co. and IBM Corp. are listed. The Amex claims the likes of National Lampoon Inc. and Boots & Coots International Well Control Inc.
The NYSE's columned building is perhaps the most powerful symbol of Wall Street, standing majestically in the heart of the financial district across the street from Federal Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated as president.
The back of the Amex's Art Deco building, by comparison, is down the street from the Pussycat Lounge and the Thunder Lingerie & More sex shop.
The Amex took a step forward last month by hiring an investment bank to help it convert from an institution owned by its seat holders to a for-profit company.
The conversion would allow the Amex to raise money from outside investors or an initial public stock offering, but it also could pave the way for its sale to a larger rival -- and the end of the road.
