“Y’all Street” is gearing up for a bull market — with longer horns.
Last Tuesday, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE) announced it received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate as a national securities exchange.
The SEC go-ahead means that the stock exchange is gearing up to begin trading in early 2026, according to a news release, joining the sprawling avenues of big-name Fortune 500 companies in Dallas.
The nickname “Y’all Street” — a southern riff on Wall Street — came about in early 2024, after Dallas was named the No. 2 city in the country for financial jobs, second only to New York, according to Bloomberg. Financial big names are flocking to the city: In 2020, Charles Schwab moved its headquarters from San Francisco to Dallas; Deloitte plans to open an expanded new campus there this year; and a $500 million Goldman Sachs facility is in the works.
The growth in financial-sector jobs in the Lone-Star state since 2019 was more than six times the growth in New York and the nation as a whole, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2024.
So is it time to take Y’all Street seriously? Here’s where it stands.
Can Dallas become a financial rival to New York?
Texas Stock Exchange’s founder and CEO James Lee said in a press release last week that the exchange is ready to lead Texas’ pro-business environment.
“Real competition for corporate listings in the United States has finally arrived,” Lee said.
Major national stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange appear to see TXSE as a potential rival: NYSE announced it would move its Chicago branch to Dallas two weeks after the Texas exchange filed for SEC approval in January, the Dallas Morning News reported. Nasdaq also announced in March that it would be opening a new headquarters in Dallas.
And the TXSE’s financial backing is nothing to scoff at: the exchange boasts $161 million in funds from Blackrock, Charles Schwab, and other banking giants, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Republican leaders push back at “woke” stock markets
Republican politicians have also celebrated the promising development of the Dallas-based exchange — and are using it against Democratic rivals.
President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post Saturday about the New York attorney general Letitia James, said that her policies would make few companies want to use the New York Stock Exchange, or the NASDAQ.
“The new Texas Exchange will be taking ALL of this business away,” Trump wrote.
Texas Republicans such as Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz shared similar sentiments about the new stock exchange’s potential as an alternative to the New York exchanges.
“If you don’t want a woke stock exchange, and just want an avenue to raise capital, Texas will be the place to do it,” Cruz wrote on X Wednesday. Cruz accompanied the post with a clip of himself on the Fox Business show suggesting that New York politicians, such as mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, were driving business leaders from their state to Texas.
Building momentum: What’s next for TXSE
Texans will have to wait until the end of 2026 to see if “Y’all Street” can truly rival Wall Street. TXSE indicated it will go live at the beginning of the year, with corporate listings in the second half.
The success of the exchange — which will be fully digital — hinges on companies deciding to list themselves, as well as the health of the state’s economy, Sriram Villupuram, a UT Arlington associate professor of finance, told the Texas Tribune. He said that interested investors will be watching closely to see how quickly TXSE can attract its first 50 to 100 companies.
“It gives those that are thinking about listing an idea about what it takes to get on the exchange, and it could snowball from there,” Villupuram said to the Tribune.
Along with the increase in companies moving their headquarters to Texas, the stock exchange could mean something big for Texans.
“What it means for local people, of course, is job creation,” Kirti Sinha, a University of Texas at Dallas assistant professor of accounting, told the Dallas Morning News.