Texas Stock Exchange begins trading as state challenges NYSE-Nasdaq duopoly

Exchange opens with backing from BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Citadel Securities

The Texas Stock Exchange began trading small stock symbols Friday, opening a new U.S. exchange amid the long-standing New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq duopoly. TXSE, pronounced “tex-ee,” started real trading at 9:30 a.m. after practice runs by traders from Goldman Sachs and Citadel Securities.

The exchange is the culmination of years of work by Texas politicians and business leaders to elevate the state’s financial standing. It aims to capture a share of a booming IPO market that includes the record-breaking SpaceX listing and anticipated public offerings from AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic.

Gov. Greg Abbott first proposed the idea at a dinner in Houston in the fall of 2022, according to the Wall Street Journal. Sitting across from Abbott was James Lee, a Houston native and longtime Texas entrepreneur who co-founded a Houston-based electronic trading platform in the 1990s that he later sold to E*Trade. Abbott told his dinner companions he wanted the Lone Star state to have its own stock exchange.

TXSE lined up financial backers including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Fortress Investment Group, and Charles Schwab, raising roughly $120 million. Lee has said the exchange is “not political, just CEO-friendly.” However, the exchange has not yet signed a single company to list shares. Lee’s listing team, led by Liz Hocker whom he hired from the New York Stock Exchange, has been working to secure major listings and win IPOs for TXSE.

The launch follows years of efforts by Texas politicians to position the state as a corporate hub. More Fortune 500 companies are now headquartered in Texas than any other state, according to the report. Goldman Sachs has around 4,500 employees in Dallas, up from fewer than 900, and is building a campus that will house more than 5,000. JPMorgan employs more people in Texas than in New York. Abbott established the Texas Business Court in 2023 in an effort to lure major companies to incorporate in Texas by promising swift dispute resolution and business-friendly judges. The state opened an office in London this year to encourage British businesses to expand to Texas.

Both incumbent exchanges have responded to the Texas challenge. NYSE rebranded its electronic stock exchange NYSE Chicago into NYSE Texas in 2025 and reincorporated it to the state, hiring Abbott’s former senior staffer Bryan Daniel as president of NYSE Texas. Nasdaq rebranded its Nasdaq BX electronic exchange into Nasdaq Texas earlier this year. SpaceX, in its blockbuster IPO, chose to dual list on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas.

The idea of a Texas exchange gained momentum after Nasdaq passed a rule requiring companies to disclose board-level diversity — a rule Nasdaq no longer has. Some conservatives bristled at the requirement, and traders began talking in early 2024 about an “anti-woke” exchange in the works. New Texas laws have been written to help entice companies, including one that raises the bar for shareholder proposals if a company is incorporated in Texas and its shares trade there or the company is headquartered in the state.

Lee said in an interview: “The proof is going to be in the movement of companies. You’re going to see listings on this exchange like has never happened before.” To woo big companies to list their shares, the exchange will need to prove it has ample liquidity, or trading volume. TXSE’s pitch to companies is that affiliating with the state of Texas is the smart business play. Legislators and exchange officials have teased that more state laws benefiting Texas-listed companies could be in the works.

Local stock exchanges were once common across the U.S., providing a place for buyers and sellers of securities to gather to trade. Over time, new technologies and regulations prompted smaller exchanges to combine or shutter. The consolidation cemented the listing duopoly of NYSE and Nasdaq in the U.S.

The exchange is operating from temporary offices in Dallas’s Uptown neighborhood and plans to move into permanent headquarters in the Bank of America Tower when construction is completed next year. By the end of the month, all U.S.-listed stocks and funds are expected to trade on the exchange. Former Gov. Rick Perry, who helped lay the groundwork for Texas’s business-friendly reputation after Boeing chose Chicago over Dallas, sits on TXSE’s board of directors. The board also includes a former SEC official, according to the source.