There’s no messing around in Texas when it comes to the Lone Star State’s new stock exchanges.

The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) launched its Texas exchange on March 31 in Dallas, with its first listing by none other than Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), ramping up an intense battle for business and stature in what some folks have nicknamed “The Wall Street of the South” (President Trump owns a majority of Trump Media, for what it’s worth).

The move by NYSE Texas — the first securities exchange to open in the state — comes just less than two months after the Texas Stock Exchange made waves with a $161 million capital raise, touted as the best-capitalized exchange launch in history.

It’s no surprise Texas is a sweet spot for Wall Street.

Lynn Martin, president of the NYSE Group, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), explains that the state encompasses the largest number of NYSE listings, “representing over $3.7 trillion in market value for our community” and is “a market leader in fostering a pro-business atmosphere.” She added the NYSE and NYSE Texas are “delighted to expand our presence in the Lone Star State, which plays a key role in driving our US economy forward.”

The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE), led by James Lee, was the first to declare its intention to build a stock exchange in the state last summer.

While the NYSE as well as the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchanges have moved swiftly since Texas Stock Exchange’s announcement, TXSE is still working toward an early 2026 launch.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission published the registration for TXSE on April 4, along with its rules and bylaws. That puts TXSE on track to receive SEC approval later this year and to begin trading in early 2026, with listings by the end of the same year.

“We would love for it to be sooner…but we are obviously in an approval process with the SEC, so getting approved has to happen first,” Nicole Chambers, global managing director of listings at TXSE, told The Daily Upside.

The Dallas Morning News gave investors a window into Lee’s vision last year. “Like how DFW International Airport brought an unforeseen level of prosperity to the region, Lee thinks the fully electronic Texas Stock Exchange will do the same, driving more headquarters relocations and capital to the area.”

Exodus to Texas

The biggest names in investing have thrown their weight behind the Texas Stock Exchange, just as they did when Miami became an alternative financial and hedge fund hub to New York City during the COVID crisis.

The national stock exchange is financed by institutional investors including Charles Schwab, Fortress, BlackRock, and Citadel Securities.

The Texas exchange pledged to foster “high-quality markets” and opened the door to companies that are frustrated with the regulations and increasing compliance costs that come with listing on rival exchanges.

TXSE’s approach aims to “restore confidence in the markets while reducing the high cost of going and staying public,” it said in a statement. “Many companies that are publicly traded today would not meet the requirements for transferring listing to TXSE. These are companies with penny stocks, foreign issuers with unverifiable finances, shell companies, and others that are already failing to meet listing requirements on existing exchanges.”

Overall, TXSE said it believes “this is distorting the capital allocation process while generating large fees for legacy exchanges” — a not-so-subtle message to its rivals, the NYSE and Nasdaq.

For its part, the Nasdaq is also expanding its presence in Texas and announced in March that it would open a new regional headquarters in Dallas and committed additional investments in Texas to support its “broad range of clients in the region.”

Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX, tech giants Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, as well as financial services giant Charles Schwab and global commercial real estate services and investment firm CBRE Group have all relocated their headquarters in recent years, attracted by a favorable tax climate, business-friendly regulatory environment, lower costs of living and reduced energy costs.

‘Future home of hard tech IPOs’

All told, Wall Street smells money in Texas:

  • It’s home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other state and more than 5,200 private equity-sponsored companies, many of which are preparing to access the public markets, according to TXSE.
  • In addition, there are more than 1,500 publicly traded companies throughout the region.

“Texas is a state of opportunity,” Nolan Carroll, founder and CEO of Atoms Not Bits, a news provider focusing on the intersection of hard tech and data, told The Daily Upside.

Carroll deemed the Texas Stock Exchange as “the future home of hard tech IPOs.”

Atoms Not Bits covers advancements in physical technologies—often referred to as “hard tech”—such as robotics, aerospace, defense, and manufacturing.

The firm guesstimates that there is “$8 trillion of annualized GDP of the Southeast quadrant, and sitting at the helm is Texas, home to the future Texas Stock Exchange.” It added: “The Texas Stock Exchange is the most well-capitalized exchange ever to file to become a national securities exchange. Texas and the South have made their name in hard tech, from the oil and gas wildcatters to the space race. Now, the Texas Stock Exchange is primed to be the IPO haven for hard tech firms.”

What’s notable about Texas is its innovative culture, stemming from Austin’s tech boom thanks to Michael Dell, as well as Texas’ abundance of relatively cheap land for building manufacturing plants, R&D facilities, and test sites, which hard tech often needs, Carroll said.

“Texas has manufacturing capacity and an attractive labor pool as well as rail lines,” Carroll said. “There is less regulation in Texas and the cost of insurance is much cheaper but more importantly, you need physical land — and that is hard to get in many places and Texas has that.”

No Place Like Home. Small-cap hard tech companies will eventually need to tap public markets to underwrite their capital expenditures, which makes TXSE a natural home for them, Carroll said.

The Texas Stock Exchange should take a similar approach to the Toronto Stock Exchange by aligning itself with critical US industries, he argued. “One key opportunity is small IPOs, which are more common in Toronto,” he said about oil & gas and mining companies. “Many bootstrapped manufacturing firms don’t fit the traditional private market cycle and may seek liquidity without a PE exit. The Texas Stock Exchange could provide a viable pathway for these firms, offering smaller cap IPOs ranging from $5 million to $20 million.”

Chambers of TXSE summed it up this way: “What we’re trying to do is to get out of the way. We want to provide high-quality markets for our companies. We want to create investor confidence for folks that list here and investors that trade with us. Our job is to not be an obstacle for public companies and rather be an exchange that works for and serves businesses, not the other way around.”