Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1547304
D allas has always understood the conversion of swagger into capital. First came cattle, then oil (you've seen Giant), land, real estate, technology, and family fortunes large enough to require their own offices. Now comes the next escalation: an actual bell-ringing, bona fide stock exchange. The Texas Stock Exchange — TXSE for short and pronounced on the inside as "TEK-see" (yes, as in sexy) — completed the rollout of full production trading on July 31 from its temporary Dallas headquarters in the Knox-Henderson neighborhood. It is electronic, national, SEC-approved, and very real. It is also entering a field dominated by the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, which means this is less "Texas builds a cute regional exchange" and more "Dallas is about to pick a fight with Manhattan." Naturally, PaperCity has questions. Who are these people? Why are they here? What watch does one wear while disrupting American capital markets? And when Taylor Sheridan inevitably options the whole thing, who plays Elaine Agather? We investigated. Money Talks. Texas Listens. So, what exactly is TXSE? It's a new venue where buyers and sellers can trade securities — and where companies and exchange- traded products can obtain primary listings, offering an alternative to the NYSE and Nasdaq. TXSE calls itself the only fully integrated national securities exchange built, headquartered, and incorporated in Texas, meaning trading and listings live under the same roof — metaphorically, because there is no screaming trading floor full of colored jackets and airborne paper, à la Dan Aykroyd's Louis Winthorpe III in Trading Places or Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox in Wall Street. The matching happens electronically. The theater comes later. Its genesis is straightforward: Texas has become too economically large for Wall Street to ignore. The state's 2025 GDP reached about $2.9 trillion, making it the world's eighth-largest economy if Texas were ranked against countries — ahead of Canada, Italy, and Russia. Today, one in 10 U.S. public companies calls Texas home. TXSE also looks beyond state lines to the Boom Belt, the fast-growing, 11-state Southeastern arc stretching from Texas through Florida and up to North Carolina. "Texas was the natural place to start Trading Places T exas just upended the world's most famous financial district with its own stock exchange — led by business superstars who recognized that the booming Lone Star State has become too economically bodacious for Wall Street to ignore. Our PaperCity Dallas contributing writers Brooke Hollis Hortenstine and Rob Brinkley are back, this time with the inside story on the new Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange — the TXSE — everything from who's who to what all these traders and titans should wear, drive, eat, and drink. Ranch Waters? Those are for day traders. Charlie Sheen, John C. McGinley in Wall Street (1987), directed by Oliver Stone 72