I wouldn't call it a whopper. He's taking a swipe at NY state because New York is part of the name of NYSE and because state officials have clearly taken politically motivated swipes at him. It's more perception than anything. The NASDAQ has no trading floor. All exchanges are done electronically. I don't know how many people are staffed at their NY NASDAQ location, but exchanges are happening electronically on the NASDAQ whether people are there or not so I would presume the number of people there is a fraction of the number of people at the NYSE exchange floor on a given day though I'm not certain of that. As a result, the NASDAQ offices could physically be located anywhere and they do have multiple locations outside of New York. It would probably take a catastrophic event to move the NYSE trading floor to another location and if that were to happen they would probably just go 100% electronic as well.

Also, NY state laws don't specifically govern stock listings. The SEC is the governing body that oversees both the NYSE and the NASDAQ. States have their own laws (Blue Sky laws) on who can sell securities and how they can be sold in an effort to protect investors within their state, but NY state laws don't have any meaningful bearing on transactions between parties outside of New York even if they are handled on the NYSE trading floor.

This is petty, but that's kinda who he is. I don't care for pettiness in my interactions with other people, but in politics I don't really care. Politics is a dirty business. Pettiness is the least of my concerns from a politician, especially one who has been the target of politically motivated attacks from offices that are not supposed to be political.

---