Performance Specialist Group is one of 15 firms. Combined these NYSE firms employ 482 specialists who specialize in more than 3,000 stocks. Specialists conduct trading in equities across a range of industries. The number of stocks traded by an individual specialist varies according to the total activity of the stocks. Most specialists manage between 5 and 10 stocks.
Specialist firms distribute the activity to balance the workload for each specialist.
A specialist managing one of the most active issues for a firm would normally specialize in that stock and perhaps another, less active stock. Specialist's Responsibility Specialists must maintain a fair, competitive, orderly and efficient market. This means that all customer orders have an equal opportunity to interact and receive the best price. It also means that once auction trading begins, a customer should be able to buy or sell a reasonable amount of stock close to the last sale. Therefore, a specialist works to avoid large or unreasonable price variations between consecutive sales.