Nyse, Intercontinentalexchange | featured news

...Today, as individual investors buy and sell common stocks less and less, the transaction symbolizes the rapidly advancing utilization of vehicles that are too esoteric for the general public to comprehend– futures contracts and options on the direction of interest rates, or oil and natural gas prices, or metals and agricultural products like wheat and corn, or precious metals like gold and silver, and especially credit instruments like mortgages and bank loans.

The New York Stock Exchange is being sold to a little-known rival in Atlanta for about $8 billion, ending more than two centuries of independence for the iconic Big Board. The buyer, IntercontinentalExchange, a 12-year-old exchange that deals in investing contracts known as futures, said Thursday that little would change for the trading floor in Manhattan's financial district.

Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange are withdrawing their proposed $11 billion bid for the parent of the New York Stock Exchange after recognizing they would not receive regulatory approval for the transaction.

Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange said they will take their bid for NYSE Euronext directly to shareholders after being rebuffed twice by the exchange.