Meet the Street: Getting a Stock Exchange Back Up on Its Feet

As chief technology officer for the American Stock Exchange, Ravi Apte oversees a complex network of stocks, options and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, for which prices and statistics pulse through the Amex's IT system at the rate of more than 7,800 quotes per second.

Here, Apte explains how it all comes together and how the exchange dealt with the crippling blow of Sept. 11 when it was forced to operate out of the New York and Philadelphia Stock exchanges for two weeks.

TSC: How was the American Stock Exchange able to continue trading in the days following the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center? Why were you more heavily impacted over here, on Rector Street, than the New York Stock Exchange two blocks away on Wall Street? And given how seriously you were impacted, how were you able to return to your trading floor a mere three weeks later on Oct. 1? ...