Why bet on exchanges?
Marsh Carter made a few bucks yesterday.
Carter and John Thain each bought 100 shares of NYSE Group Inc. yesterday morning, the ceremonial first public trades in the stock of the New York Stock Exchange's holding company. Carter, the retired State Street Corp. chief and current stock exchange chairman, and Thain, the exchange's chief executive, bought their shares for $67. By the end of the session, they had closed at $80.
That's the kind of opening day stock performance investors hope to get from a young company with robust growth prospects. The New York Stock Exchange is a 213-year-old organization with a shrinking market share. NYSE Group shares were not cheap to start with. They hit the public market with a value around 35 times earnings estimated for next year. Other exchanges are commanding rich prices as well, including the Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. (57 times 2006 profit forecast), Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc. (38 times expected 2006 earnings), and CBOT Holdings Inc. (45 times this year's earnings forecast).
Those prices relative to earnings expectations are two, three, or more times the average in the Standard & Poor's 500 index, reflecting a global rally for exchange shares that has stretched over four years. Some investors think the exchange stocks have run too far for their own good. Many of the factors pushing those stocks are at work at the newly public NYSE Group. Technology driving faster and cheaper trades tops the list. Expectations of exchange mergers across continents and specialties have helped drive prices. New public ownership structures for exchanges that have operated privately are also important.
NYSE Group was formally created this week when the New York Stock Exchange closed on its acquisition of Archipelago Holdings Inc., the big electronic trading platform. Much more is about to change. ''The first thing we're going to do is offer more product," says Carter. ''This is all about choice."
Fast and cheap computer-based trading blended with exchange traders who can manage more difficult transactions will create a hybrid system intended to offer customers whatever service suits their needs.
The acquisition of Archipelago also means NYSE Group can get in the business of option trading right away. Archipelago will also bolster the exchange's bond-trading technology.
Public ownership of exchange organizations like NYSE Group may also make them more responsive to competitive issues. Consider the New York Stock Exchange's declining share of trading in its own stocks -- about 80 percent a year ago and just 71.7 percent in January.
Carter says much of that erosion is due to the exchange's business hours, which begin at 9:30 a.m. and finish at 4 p.m. ''That's not a 21st-century operating schedule, and we will have to address that with people who operate from the floor," he says.
The business of publicly traded exchanges also will be shaped by mergers before long. The biggest and most successful competitors will operate around the world and trade many kinds of securities.
NYSE Group will need time to integrate the exchange with Archipelago's operations. But most observers believe it will be an acquirer before long, and the London Stock Exchange is one likely target.
Leading exchange customers, the big brokerages and investment firms, like most of the changes they're seeing. But they worried the NYSE Group and Nasdaq were consolidating too much control in a changing world and helped build up electronic trading platforms at regional alternatives in Boston and Philadelphia to keep the leading exchanges honest on price and service.
Every one of these exchanges relies on trading volume, and they won't all succeed. The first publicly traded exchange to stumble short of expectations may well be the first acquired.
But, for yesterday, Marsh Carter had to be pleased with his trade.
Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com. 
