NYSE plans Net trading system.

The New York Stock Exchange Inc. is planning to create an Internet-based system that will handle trades of less than 1,000 shares electronically. The plan was officially announced this morning by Richard Grasso, chairman and CEO of the Big Board, during a speech at the Securities Industry Association_s annual conference in Boca Raton, Fla. Under the plan, the NYSE will create a system that will allow investors to execute orders online rather than having to use the current method of entering orders through floor traders or specialists. Even though 90% of the NYSE_s orders are delivered electronically now, the execution of those trades are still done manually. Grasso said the Big Board plans to introduce the service over the next three to six months. A press release on the NYSE_s Web site states that the 80 million Americans who are "shareholders" in various stocks would be able to execute trades through this system via an NYSE member firm. The new system would effectively be an electronic communications network (ECN), the same type of systems that are currently used by institutional traders to bypass brokers to enter trades. Even though ECNs currently don_t eat into NYSE_s trading volume, that could change. Chicago-based ECN Archipelago is planning to begin handling NYSE-based trades in the next few weeks. The Internet-based electronic order book, which is still subject to approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be operational by the second quarter of next year.