Let’s NMS with Texas: The Implications of the Texas Stock Exchange for Self-Regulation

The Texas Stock Exchange’s registration as a new national securities exchange is arguably the most formidable challenge to the NYSE and Nasdaq duopoly in recent memory. TXSE has raised expectations not only among those who champion the rise of Texas as a financial center and resist the imposition of progressive norms through securities law, but also among scholars who favor competition as a solution to structural problems in the national market system (NMS) for equity trading. This Article explores the extent to which a new exchange can manage these expectations. It further considers what it means to be a “fully integrated stock exchange” in a political and judicial climate increasingly hostile to the self-regulatory model and whether an opportunity for ideological competition can restore confidence in that model.