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The NYSE floor traders are only there for window dressing to be seen by the TV cameras. They are entirely redundant and watch movies for much of the day when there is no need to show a flurry of activity after opening or before closing. The entire building is no longer of any real importance.

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Most of those floor traders is running a small business (2/3 guys/girls) based on past contacts and trader know-how (such as it is - some better, some worse.) It's really more of a 'bazaar' for small, likely well connected, trading firms rather than anything else. It has been 'hard' for them in recent years as order flow has moved to the largest, too-big-to-fail brokers (GS, JMP etc). But certainly the NYSE gets a lot out of the media coverage, but the brokers themselves are not owned by the NYSE.

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