Extreme Makeover: Wall St. Edition

Buy! Sell! Spackle! Caulk!

These days, amid all of the stock trading on the famous floor of the New York Stock Exchange, an interior renovation project is under way.

One side of the exchange is being transformed into something more modern, a brand new wing with sleek, multi-computer-screen-splendored seating areas fit for a starship trooper. There are plans next year for an equally ambitious makeover on the other side of the exchange's football-field-sized floor -- actually five large adjacent rooms.

This effort to refurbish the physical beating heart of global capitalism, where billions of shares of stock are traded most weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., is not just to make the place more aesthetically pleasing. The goal is to create a much more attractive business environment for traders -- many of whom have been leaving the floor in droves this past decade.

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Put simply, the relevance of the NYSE floor -- once among Wall Street's most exclusive and profitable memberships -- has, steadily, gone the way of Members Only jackets.

Despite the lively but strictly ceremonial opening and closing bell rituals shown on cable news, actual trading on the exchange's floor has been slowing considerably.

While there still are trades with real human beings – floor brokers, clerks and market makers – yelling buy and sell orders at each other, the viability of the exchange has been upended by the rise of computerized trading systems and electronic "liquidity venues," cyber markets, or what the floor denizens collectively call "upstairs."

This trend, as relentless as the one that punished stubborn buggy whip manufacturers at the turn of the prior century, has eroded the ability for the NYSE's lifeblood -- human traders -- to make a living. Activity on the floor, particularly between the opening part of the session and the last hour before the close, has been fading.