American Century Supports Reg NMS and Is Critical of Soft Dollars

VP and director of U.S. equity trading John Wheeler testified before the SEC during the Reg NMS hearings and believes efforts such as this will help make the markets more efficient for shareholders and traders.

American Century

John Wheeler

Vice President and Director of U.S. Equity Trading

4500 Main Street
Kansas City, MO 64111

Assets under management:

Approximately $100 billion in equities

Fund(s) for which you trade:

I represent the entire complex of American Century's funds.

Types of products traded:

We primarily trade cash equities at our headquarters in Kansas City. To a lesser extent we do some work in ETFs and futures. Our fixed-income business is located at our California location.

Daily volume in equities:

We trade about 14 million shares a day, or about 3 billion shares a year in domestic equities and ADRs. Things like options and futures comprise probably less than 5 percent of what we do.

Structure of trading department:

We are structured with a global head of trading, a gentleman by the name of Steve Klein. Mr. Klein joined us from the Kansas City Board of Trade. He oversees both the international desk in New York, as well as the domestic desk in Kansas City. The bulk of our work is done right here in Kansas City. Our international effort is out of New York City. We have a team of four dedicated traders in New York handling order flow. We also have a portfolio management office, where we manage our quantitative equity funds and fixed-income business in Mountain View, Calif. I report to Mr. Kline, as does my counterpart in New York.

Previous Positions:

I started my career while in college in the early to mid '80s. I worked in the investment department of Marine Bank as an order-entry clerk entering fixed-income buys and sells. By the time I graduated, I was a commissioned fixed-income salesperson. In October 1986, I started at Robert W. Baird as a market maker and began working at American Century in 1991.

Education:

B.A. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Vision for the Future

In the future the lines will be blurred between international stocks and domestic stocks, especially with the proposed NYSE merger with Euronext and all of the other foreign exchanges that are merging or talking about merging. There will also be more-efficient ways to make those instruments (stocks) fungible. And things such as time zones will become less and less significant.

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