New film called 'Ghost Exchange' focuses on Jersey City helping provide an electronic backbone for Wall St.

Billions of securities transactions every day make it possible for Wall St. to do it's job. Without the data flowing through server farms as big as football fields the entire financial system would grind to a halt pretty quickly. More and more these servers handling billions of trades are done here in Jersey City as well as Weehawken and Secaucus:

The story notes that the headquarters for Direct Edge, the third largest U.S. stock exchange, is located in Jersey City. Equinix, a data center that is the primary facility for the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Direct Edge, is located in Secaucus. And Saavis, a data center that is a primary facility of BATS Global Markets, is located in Weehawken.

The third largest stock exchange here in Wall Street West. Pretty impressive. William O’Brien, chief executive of Jersey City’s Direct Edge in fact said, "The places that people are used to thinking about as the home of the stock market are really just glorified TV studios."

The film also discusses the issue of high speed trading, how secure and reliable all these data centers are and 2010's Flash Crash. It is available on iTunes. But first, a trailer...

Once again, Johnny's got vision and the rest of the world wears bifocals

How long ago did Johnny start calling Jersey City "Cool City?" Almost from the start. The place needed a litle jazzing up when he got here and hence Cool City was born in Jersey City. Well NOW others are piling onto the meme, like today for instance. None other than the Wall Street Journal is following Johnny on this and they have written a very nice article on how Jersey City is now living up to its monicker of "The Sixth Borough" (At some point we're going to need to have a city-wide talk on this -- whether we want to be known as 'Wall Street West' or 'The Sixth').

So take some time and see what New York is discovering about Jersey City (well Grove Street area mostly) and then come back here with your opinions.

Jersey City got quite the write up in the Wall Street Journal

According to the WSJ we're reinventing ourselves in a big way. It's got some nice restaurant mentions along with other places to go, see and do. A snippet:

"Just across the Hudson River from Manhattan and easily accessible by the PATH train, Jersey City is increasingly a popular destination for those who want to be close to New York City without being immersed in its bustle. Once a heavily industrial area, the area has in the past several years seen a surge in new development and in conversions of former industrial buildings into housing, office, retail and entertainment space.

The short commute, the views and the relatively low prices draw some Manhattan workers. Others both live and work in the area, creating a community dedicated to seeing the city thrive."

You can read the rest of Sushil Cheema's fine article on Wall Street West here.