Big Board Weighs Reviving Program-Trading `Collar'
NEW YORK -- Under attack by its own listed companies and powerful floor traders, the New York Stock Exchange is considering reinstituting a "collar" on program trading that it abandoned last year, according to people familiar with the Big Board.</br></br>The exchange also may step up its disclosure of firms engaged in program trading, these people said.</br></br>Big Board officials wouldn't comment publicly. But in an interview in which he called the stock market's volatility a "national problem," Big Board Chairman John J. Phelan Jr. said, "We are going to try to do some things in the short intermediate term" to help the situation.</br></br>Mr. Phelan has been viewed by many exchange members as being indifferent to stock-price swings caused by program trades. He said he is "very surprised" by the furor over program trading and the exchange's role in it that has raged in recent days.</br></br>Mr. Phelan said that the Big Board has been trying to deal quietly with the issue, but that banning computer-assisted trading strategies entirely, as some investors want, would be like "taking everybody out of an automobile and making them ride a horse."