NYSE opening price

[lorn]

I was wondering if the true NYSE opening price (the price set by the specialist) is reflected in the data given by esignal, or does esignal consider any trade (ie, ECN) after the market open time (9:30) as the "opening price"?

It would make sense that the intraday charts would reflect the first trade that was transacted after 9:30 to show as the open price for whatever time interval bar. However if the trade happened to come from an ECN, is the daily/intraday chart updated later to reflect the NYSE (specialist) open?

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Lorn

[ScottJ]

Hi Lorn,

I'm pretty sure we mark the first trade of the day as the "open" for stocks. I checked 4-5 issues (IBM, T, GE for ex) and in each case, the price in the open column of a quote window matches the first trade of the day in Time and Sales. If I use the regional symbol for say IBM (IBM=N for NYSE), then the open column matches the first NYSE trade of the day. Otherwise, the composite symbol shows first trade, regardless of exchange.

In the near future, I do believe we'll start displaying special flags and trade conditions in our Time and Sales window. At that pont, you may see a price marked as the "open" if it's sent by the NYSE with that flag. We are starting to look at the data internally and should be able to document all these behaviors as we make the new data available to all subs. Release should be by early Q3 of this year.

Hope that helps.

Thanks.