As the Security Traders Association of New York runs its day-long industry conference today, the stakes have never been higher for its membership.
Trading professionals, facing new regulation and a potentially hostile legislative climate, must join together at a time when many are ignoring industry issues. One way to do so is support trade associations like STANY, which have a presence in Washington.
Such is the plea of trading pro Brad Wilson, who heads STANY’s new membership committee. The committee is trying to stop the decline STA’s biggest affiliate has experienced over the past decade.
Thanks to industry consolidation and increasingly electronic markets, STANY’s membership has dropped by more than 50 percent over the last decade, from around 2,000 members down to about 950.
"I want to make traders aware that they have a tremendous stake in the regulatory and legislative debates going on in Washington," Wilson told Traders Magazine. "I think some of them aren’t aware of the resources STA and STANY have."
So Wilson, a sales trader with Dahlman Rose & Co., is telling trading professionals to join. STA and STANY have a presence in Washington, D.C., through law firm Williams & Jensen.
"The STA and its affiliates are the only professional organizations focused solely on issues relating to the trading of securities and the pertinent issues that surround our industry," Wilson wrote in a letter to trading professionals.
"Since STANY is an organization of traders run by traders," he wrote, "there could be no group more qualified to represent our unique perspective to regulators, legislators and the media."
Wilson’s goal? He hopes to increase STANY membership by 10 percent over the next year.
