We were on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Friday morning.  We got there before the market opened and got to meet some of the participants.  It was an eye opener to say the least.

We met one of the DMM’s (Designated Market Makers) that was working through the crisis last year as some of the major financial institutions collapsed one by one.  These DMM’s are essentially the official market maker for a given stock.  They for example determine the opening price of a stock each day. As all the world is selling they have to buy to provide liquidity to the market. Yikes!  They do this to prevent (as much as one can) volatility.  The DDM has to balance many responsibilities.  They need to protect the stock they represent and yet they can not afford to lose too much money for their own company. On the NYSE all the DMM’s work for one of four organizations.  Used to be way more but there have been consolidations as smaller organizations could not afford the risk.  Deep pockets and the ability to take a long term view are required.        

A market maker can make money in the market as it rises and as it falls - as long as they correctly predict which way a stock's price will move.  It was amazing to watch the DMM buying and selling stock at the pace they did – especially as the market opened at 9:30am.  The speed of the trades, the speed of the decision making was breath taking.

I came away thinking that the world of Project Management could learn lots from the pragmatic yet strategic decision making ability of these market makers.  If we on projects would make decisions more proactively – lots of our issues would go away faster – and projects would be way more successful.