“Equities in Dallas,” cried the traders in “Liar’s Poker”, an account by Michael Lewis of his life as a junior banker in the late 1980s. Demotion from New York to the backwater of Texas would be a humiliation. Who wants to sling shares to yokels?

Times may be changing. On June 4th an upstart Texas Stock Exchange (TxSE) said it had received $120m in funding from financial giants including BlackRock, a fund manager, and Citadel Securities, a marketmaker. The TxsE will, its boss wrote, be the best-capitalised challenger to the New York Stock Exchange.