Philadelphia Stock Exchange Closing Bell Rings At Smeal

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (January 19, 2007) – Smeal College of Business Dean Jim Thomas rang the closing bell of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange today in Smeal's Trading Room on Penn State's University Park campus.

At 4 p.m., Thomas signaled the exchange's closing by ringing an original Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive bell, which was donated to the Smeal Trading Room by alumnus Howard Trauger '69, '78 MBA, president of Schuylkill Capital Management LLC.

Trauger presented the bell to Smeal in 2004, and former Dean Judy Olian rang it as the Philadelphia Stock Exchange's closing bell on May 13, 2004. Since then, the bell has been on permanent display in Smeal's state-of-the-art Trading Room, home to the college's $4.7 million student-managed Nittany Lion Fund stock portfolio.

The Trading Room replicates a real-world trading experience and functions as a classroom and a laboratory. Several televisions offer access to live coverage of financial news and real-time tickers and stock boards provide students with the latest financial information, including live Bloomberg and Reuters data feeds. Each of the 54 dual-monitor workstations in the Trading Room is equipped with the software needed for virtually any finance-related activity. For more details, visit www.smeal.psu.edu/traderoom.

Trauger, who formed Schuylkill Capital (www.schuylkillcap.com) in 1990 to provide advisory services to a select group of private and institutional clients, has more than 30 years of investment management experience in a variety of roles with banking and money management firms. In 2002, he received the Smeal MBA Distinguished Achievement Award. Trauger served on the Smeal MBA Advisory Board from 1997 to 2003 and he currently sits on the Oversight Committee of the Nittany Lion Fund.

The Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded in 1790 as the first stock exchange in America. The exchange trades more than 7,000 stocks, more than 2,300 equity options, 15 sectors index options, and multiple currency pairs. For more information about the exchange and its products, visit www.phlx.com.