Maurice Marciano, chairman and founder of Guess?, Inc., was at NYSE this morning for the company’s investor day and the launch of its GUESS Seductive fragrance. His conversation with CNBC’s Erin Burnett, embedded above, focused less on fashion and style than about the economic downturn’s impact on discretionary spending habits.

Women in America, more so than in Europe or Asia, “buy what they need rather than what they want,” he said.

He added: “The thing that we need, and everybody knows that, is that we need the job market to really start again, to pick up. Once people are going to be secure about their job and knowing they have income, they will start spending again. Right now they are shy about spending and we cannot blame them.”

My lifelong allegiance to the New York Yankees aside, props to the team for using their status as the most famous sports franchise in the world to draw attention to a group of unsung heroes.

On Tuesday, NYSE was honored to host a visit by Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, star pitcher C.C. Sabathia and Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, who toured the trading floor and worked the media circuit to promote the team’s HOPE Week (Help Others Persevere and Excel). The Yankees’ website says the goal is to “[bring] to light five remarkable stories to provide hope and encouragement to the recipient of the gesture and inspire individuals into action in their own communities.”

Naturally, I was in a meeting upstairs and missed the whole event. Would have loved to offer my highly insightful input to Mr. Cashman about running the ballclub, but the person I really wanted to meet was the special guest the group brought along: Mohamed Kamara. Here is how the team describes this young man:

Mohamed Kamara is being honored by the New York Yankees for being a “man among boys.” Kamara, a survivor of the war in Sierre Leone, was forced to become the “man of the house” at age 9, providing for his family by foraging on his own to prevent their starvation. When the war subsided approximately six years ago, Mohamed, who did not speak English at the time, made the difficult decision to come to the United States to join his aunt and uncle in an impoverished section of the Bronx.

Since arriving in the United States, Mohamed has simultaneously created a life for himself and improved the lives of others. He graduated in the top quarter of his class at Bronx Leadership Academy High School and earned a partial scholarship to Johnson & Wales University in Rhode Island, where he will work toward an international business degree.

Over the last four years, he has remained the breadwinner for his family in Africa despite being a fulltime Bronx high school student, working as a caddy at a New Jersey golf course. “What makes me happy,” said Mohamed “is providing for my family since they depend on me so much.”

He also displays selflessness in his treatment of his peers. He has become a mentor and sounding board for other African students in his school, and he founded the Sierra Leone Gentlemen, which organizes benefits at his local church to raise money that is sent back to his homeland, enabling West African children to attend school.

Mohamed is currently writing an autobiography so he can share his message of hope and perseverance. Despite being a student in name, his actions prove he is a teacher in life.

The Yankees are posting brief videos about the honorees; the videos about the other recipients to date this week are here and here.

Reading about these remarkable people can really make you wonder, in our world so laser-focused either on the mundane or on celebrity,how many other amazing stories there must be among the people we pass by every day — people who overcome tremendous adversity or manage to better the world around them. Props to the Yankees and to the honorees themselves for sharing these stories. As Mariano Rivera says in one of the videos, we can all use a little inspiration.

Last Friday afternoon, when everyone was looking to head out for the weekend as soon as the NYSE Closing Bell® rang, something happened that caused some people on and off the trading floor to keep at it for another half hour, for a very good result.

At the end of the trading day, an order arrived to sell 700,000 shares of Fortress Investment Group (symbol FIG) at the close, prompting an imbalance of 675,000 shares to sell. Average daily trading volume in FIG is about 1.8 million shares.

Judging by those numbers, how far would you guess the stock price would fall at the close? A dollar or more? In fact, we disseminated an “indicative” closing price of $0.00. An indicative price shows were a stock would close based only on the existing orders on our book at that point in time, without receiving any offsetting orders.

Happily, that’s not where the stock closed. The designated market maker, in consultation with a floor governor (an official who oversees such situations), called for invoking Rule 123C, which enables NYSE to extend the close in a security to solicit orders to offset an imbalance that would otherwise cause price “dislocation.” A System Status alert went out to customers:

Closing Imbalance Alert in Fortress Investment Group (NYSE: FIG)

Under conditions set forth in Exchange Rule 123C, the NYSE cash market is currently accepting interest to offset a closing imbalance.

Symbol: FIG

Fortress Investment Group

675,000 to Sell

Last sale: $3.59

Post 9 and Panel L

Orders accepted until 4:20 p.m. ET, unless offsetting interest at a price reasonably close to last sale is received before that time.

Contact your Floor Broker to submit interest to offset this imbalance.

Note: Interest may be entered only on the contra side, and must have a limit price that is no worse than the last sale. Interest entered in response to this alert may not be canceled.

And customers responded (and thank you for doing so). FIG closed at $3.52, down just 7 cents from the last sale. The final trade was 713,000 shares — a big chunk of the 1.162 million FIG shares that traded on NYSE that day, and the 3.57 million shares that traded on a consolidated basis (that is, in all markets combined).

Dampening volatility is of great value to investors and issuers, and it happens more frequently on NYSE than you might know. It doesn’t always involve Rule 123C — it might be an intraday order imbalance, or one of our Liquidity Replenishment Points being triggered, or just a vibrant, price-discovering auction at the open or close. But it always involves a fast dose of transparency and human judgment adding value to the trading process. It might take a little more time, but sometimes getting the price right is more important than speed of execution.

The transformation of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor we’ve discussed numerous times — including here and here — continues to progress. Here’s the latest news report on the project, from NY1.

Props to correspondent Diane King for asking a question I hadn’t heard before: with all these traders having a place to sit for the first time, will that reduce the energy level of the floor? Keith Bliss has an interesting take on that:

“So what it’s allowed us to do, is it’s allowed all our New York based sales traders and brokers to be in the same location to share information to communicate at the point of sale in the largest equity market in the world,” says Cuttone & Company Senior Vice President Keith Bliss.

As for the energy level on the floor, it’s often pretty high. When asked if a more sedentary environment would damage that, Bliss says not so.

“Having them together actually increases the energy level because they can share ideas, they can trade information,” says Bliss.

Bigger workspace, better system network, the ability to work together, and the ability to walk out to the point of price discovery at the standard-setting exchange — no wonder there’s a waiting list for the new space.

PS — I like how NY1 has combined onto a single page the video report plus a brief report from the correspondent. Still missing: an embed button.

The transformation of the New York Stock Exchange trading floor we’ve discussed numerous times — including here and here — continues to progress. Here’s the latest news report on the project, from NY1.

Props to correspondent Diane King for asking a question I hadn’t heard before: with all these traders having a place to sit for the first time, will that reduce the energy level of the floor? Keith Bliss has an interesting take on that:

“So what it’s allowed us to do, is it’s allowed all our New York based sales traders and brokers to be in the same location to share information to communicate at the point of sale in the largest equity market in the world,” says Cuttone & Company Senior Vice President Keith Bliss.

As for the energy level on the floor, it’s often pretty high. When asked if a more sedentary environment would damage that, Bliss says not so.

“Having them together actually increases the energy level because they can share ideas, they can trade information,” says Bliss.

Bigger workspace, better system network, the ability to work together, and the ability to walk out to the point of price discovery at the standard-setting exchange — no wonder there’s a waiting list for the new space.

PS — I like how NY1 has combined onto a single page the video report plus a brief report from the correspondent. Still missing: an embed button.

Juanita M. Kreps, the first female U.S. Secretary of Commerce and the first woman board member of the New York Stock Exchange (among myriad other achievements), passed away recently at the age of 89. I never had the honor of meeting her, but while reading the remembrances and obituaries about this great woman in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, I was struck by how her life was full of what sounded like excellent lessons in leadership. Here are a few of these, but I recommend reading up on Ms. Kreps yourself:

• Speak your mind, even in front of the president of the United States. Or perhaps, especially in front of the president of the United States.

A soft-spoken and genteel Southerner, she was nevertheless known for her strength and willingness to speak her mind. At a televised news conference with Carter after he named her commerce secretary in 1976, she was asked to respond to the President-elect’s claim that it had been difficult to find qualified women to fill Cabinet posts.

“I think it would be hard to defend the proposition that there are not a great many qualified women,” she said. “We have to do a better job of looking.”

Carter smiled, then said, “I think she said she disagrees with me.”
– Washington Post

• A company is part of the community. How far ahead of her time was Mrs. Kreps on the following?

While not in the inner circle of Carter advisers, she gave the president a crucial boost when his standing with business had ebbed, organizing meetings for him with corporate leaders in 1977 to map anti-inflation and economic strategies. Talk of a crisis in business confidence waned, and many executives, though skeptical at first, came to regard Dr. Kreps as an ally.

But she also pressed business to look beyond profits and act with greater social responsibility toward employees, consumers and the public interest, with measures including affirmative-action programs and steps to protect the environment and strengthen corporate integrity. She was an advocate for women and older workers, the unemployed, minority-owned businesses, and development in depressed urban areas.
– New York Times

• It’s not where you come from that counts — it’s where you can take yourself.

Blair Juanita Morris was born Jan. 11, 1921, in Lynch, Ky., in the heart of Appalachia, where her father was a coal-mine operator. Her parents divorced when she was 4, and she grew up with her mother. At age 12, she went to a Presbyterian boarding school and then to Berea College in Kentucky, where she was a 1942 honors graduate in economics.

After growing up during the Depression, it had been easy to decide what to study in school, Dr. Kreps told The Washington Post in 1977.

“If you read the newspapers and had a sense of where the world was, you couldn’t help being concerned,” she said. “I thought economics would give me more insight into what was going on.”

She went on to receive a master’s degree and doctorate in economics, both from Duke.

She married Clifton H. Kreps Jr., an economics professor, in 1944, and they moved together to teach at Denison University in Ohio and Hofstra College and Queens College, both in New York. She returned to Duke in the mid-1950s and worked her way up to full professor. She also served as dean of the women’s college and vice president before she was invited to brief President-elect Carter on economic issues and to join his Cabinet.
– Washington Post

• It’s important for companies to create an environment where all types of people have an opportunity to contribute.

In 1962, before Betty Friedan launched the women’s liberation movement with the publication of “The Feminine Mystique,” Dr. Kreps recognized in a speech that most women want both “further education” and “meaningful work.”

She wrote widely about the employment of women and older workers, including in her 1971 book, “Sex in the Marketplace: American Women at Work,” and a 1975 study co-written with Robert Clark, “Sex, Age, and Work: The Changing Composition of the Labor Force.” She attempted to explain why women got fewer advanced degrees and more low-paying jobs than men, and she pushed for public preschools and flexible employment schedules.
– Washington Post

• If you’re blazing a trail, you’re going to take some heat.

She was named the first female director of the New York Stock Exchange in 1972. “I don’t think you have to shy away from the idea of tokenism,” she told the Washington Post in 1977, soon after being confirmed by the Senate as commerce secretary. “It’s just a stage we have to go through.”
– Wall Street Journal

• Information about individuals has great value and needs protection.

She supported new laws to ensure privacy for millions of consumers, requiring insurance, financial and credit card companies to tell customers about information collected on them, to explain adverse decisions affecting them, and to accord them rights to challenge erroneous data in their files.
– Washington Post

• We’ve taken many steps forward since her time in office, but the problems she faced still seem current today.

Ms. Kreps developed a reputation as a skilled bureaucratic infighter, successfully capturing some of the Treasury Department’s responsibilities on trade oversight.

She led U.S. delegations to the Soviet Union and Africa, and initiated negotiations that resulted in a draft agreement to normalize trade relations with China.

Yet she never reached the president’s inner circle of advisers, the “Boy’s Breakfast Club” as she called it, which met regularly to advise the president on domestic policy.

“I did feel cut out,” she told the Washington Post in 1979.
– Wall Street Journal

I now have the official volume numbers from last Friday’s Russell index reconstitution, and there is a stark contrast between the performance of NYSE’s close versus Nasdaq’s.

On Friday, NYSE executed 2.556 billion shares, including 1.246 billion at the close, compared with the year-to-date averages of 1.27 billion and 131 million shares, respectively. Consolidated volume for the day was 7.4 billion shares, putting NYSE’s market share at 41.7 percent for the day, with an additional 7.5 percent executed on NYSE Arca. Another hat tip to my colleague Ann Price for the final numbers.

The contrast comes in comparing each market’s share of trading in its respective listed stocks, versus that traded on the trade reporting facilities (TRFs), which are facilities for “printing” off-exchange trades such as internalized and dark-pool trades.

On Friday, NYSE’s market share in NYSE-listed stocks of 41.7 percent compared quite favorably with the TRFs’ 33.2 percent in NYSE issues.

In contrast, Nasdaq’s 34.8 percent in Nasdaq-listed stocks was far short of the TRFs’ 50.5 percent in Nasdaq-listed issues.

As I mentioned before “Russell day,” NYSE customers tend to send more of their orders to NYSE when trading is difficult, such as when stocks are under pressure or during events such as Russell when the stocks of hundreds of companies are moving in or out of indexes or changing their weightings within indexes.

Last Friday’s activity bore that out: customers strongly preferred to use the NYSE’s closing auction rather than other venues. What does it say that in crunch time, Nasdaq customers sent more than half of their business to the TRFs — far more than to Nasdaq?

Another Russell post-script: NYSE Amex also had an exceptionally strong day on Friday, capturing 65.8 percent of trading in NYSE Amex-listed issues, compared with total TRF share of 30.5 percent of NYSE Amex-listed issues. NYSE Amex traded 181 million shares at the close, plus another 135 million in CS2, compared with year-to-date averages of 2.4 million and 1.3 million shares, respectively. The same principles that apply to NYSE apply to NYSE Amex as well: when the going gets tough, customers increasingly look for a high-touch + high-tech market.

I now have the official volume numbers from last Friday’s Russell index reconstitution, and there is a stark contrast between the performance of NYSE’s close versus Nasdaq’s.

On Friday, NYSE executed 2.556 billion shares, including 1.246 billion at the close, compared with the year-to-date averages of 1.27 billion and 131 million shares, respectively. Consolidated volume for the day was 7.4 billion shares, putting NYSE’s market share at 41.7 percent for the day, with an additional 7.5 percent executed on NYSE Arca. Another hat tip to my colleague Ann Price for the final numbers.

The contrast comes in comparing each market’s share of trading in its respective listed stocks, versus that traded on the trade reporting facilities (TRFs), which are facilities for “printing” off-exchange trades such as internalized and dark-pool trades.

On Friday, NYSE’s market share in NYSE-listed stocks of 41.7 percent compared quite favorably with the TRFs’ 33.2 percent in NYSE issues.

In contrast, Nasdaq’s 34.8 percent in Nasdaq-listed stocks was far short of the TRFs’ 50.5 percent in Nasdaq-listed issues.

As I mentioned before “Russell day,” NYSE customers tend to send more of their orders to NYSE when trading is difficult, such as when stocks are under pressure or during events such as Russell when the stocks of hundreds of companies are moving in or out of indexes or changing their weightings within indexes.

Last Friday’s activity bore that out: customers strongly preferred to use the NYSE’s closing auction rather than other venues. What does it say that in crunch time, Nasdaq customers sent more than half of their business to the TRFs — far more than to Nasdaq?

Another Russell post-script: NYSE Amex also had an exceptionally strong day on Friday, capturing 65.8 percent of trading in NYSE Amex-listed issues, compared with total TRF share of 30.5 percent of NYSE Amex-listed issues. NYSE Amex traded 181 million shares at the close, plus another 135 million in CS2, compared with year-to-date averages of 2.4 million and 1.3 million shares, respectively. The same principles that apply to NYSE apply to NYSE Amex as well: when the going gets tough, customers increasingly look for a high-touch + high-tech market.

After much planning and preparation, the annual reconstitution of the Russell Indexes seemed as smooth as a one-game-playoff home-run swing by Russell ‘Bucky” Dent.

Sorry, Boston fans. Just can’t let that one go. I am nothing if not partisan.

NYSE volume was strong, though not a record. Today’s full-day NYSE volume of 2.555 billion shares was the highest for a “Russell Day” since the 2.621 billion in 2007, and up a bit from last year’s 2.348 billion shares.

We did have record electronic-message traffic on our data system, but I’ll stick with the stats on shares.

Today’s NYSE volume was roughly double the year-to-date average volume of 1.263 billion shares. Today’s NYSE share of trading in NYSE-listed stocks was approximately 40 percent, compared with a year-to-date average of about 24 percent.

The NYSE closing trade accounted for about 1.23 billion shares of today’s volume, compared with 1.397 billion shares in the closing trade of last year’s Russell Day.

Now it’s on to the weekend. Hope you have a great one. Speaking of great ones, I’m catching Ringo at Bethel Woods tomorrow night. And you know, on Russell Day, it don’t come easy, but we get by with a little help from our friends.

.

After much planning and preparation, the annual reconstitution of the Russell Indexes seemed as smooth as a one-game-playoff home-run swing by Russell ‘Bucky” Dent.

Sorry, Boston fans. Just can’t let that one go. I am nothing if not partisan.

NYSE volume was strong, though not a record. Today’s full-day NYSE volume of 2.555 billion shares was the highest for a “Russell Day” since the 2.621 billion in 2007, and up a bit from last year’s 2.348 billion shares.

We did have record electronic-message traffic on our data system, but I’ll stick with the stats on shares.

Today’s NYSE volume was roughly double the year-to-date average volume of 1.263 billion shares. Today’s NYSE share of trading in NYSE-listed stocks was approximately 40 percent, compared with a year-to-date average of about 24 percent.

The NYSE closing trade accounted for about 1.23 billion shares of today’s volume, compared with 1.397 billion shares in the closing trade of last year’s Russell Day.

Now it’s on to the weekend. Hope you have a great one. Speaking of great ones, I’m catching Ringo at Bethel Woods tomorrow night. And you know, on Russell Day, it don’t come easy, but we get by with a little help from our friends.

.