The Texas Stock Exchange officially went live Friday in Dallas, giving America a new major market venue and giving Wall Street another reminder that the center of economic gravity is not glued to Manhattan forever.

The Dallas-based exchange opened trading for all of its listed tickers, marking the first new major stock exchange launch in the United States in decades.

That is no small Texas-sized footnote.

The TXSE is aiming directly at the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Composite, the longtime giants of American listings.

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The message from Dallas is simple enough, Texas is open for business, and the old coastal club now has competition.

The exchange is backed by serious financial muscle, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Charles Schwab.

In other words, this is not some courthouse square publicity stunt, no matter how badly the usual coastal skeptics may want to pretend otherwise.

TXSE plans to begin corporate listings later this year, then move into initial public offerings starting in 2027.

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The exchange sees Texas and the broader South as the "center of gravity for American capitalism", a phrase that sounds less like marketing and more like a plain reading of the map.

The exchange is leaning into what it calls the "Boom Belt", a fast growing region that has been pulling jobs, capital and people away from states where taxes and regulations seem designed by people allergic to prosperity.

"As the only primary corporate and ETP listings venue built and headquartered in the Boom Belt, TXSE is both a product of the region's rise and a catalyst to accelerate it," TXSE explained.

The numbers help explain why Dallas is suddenly looking like more than just a challenger.

According to the exchange, the region has an annualized GDP of $8.9 trillion, larger than every world economy except the United States and China.

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The TXSE also says 40 percent of American exports move through the Boom Belt, while 57 percent of United States job growth over the last five years has happened there.

That is the sort of statistic that tends to make California tax planners reach for another committee hearing.

For now, the exchange is operating out of temporary offices in the Uptown neighborhood of Dallas.

A bell ringing ceremony was scheduled for Friday afternoon to mark the official launch, because even Texas knows Wall Street does not own all the theater.

The permanent home will be inside the Bank of America Tower, where TXSE plans to operate the Texas Market Center.

Once completed, the tower is expected to be the tallest building in Uptown Dallas.

The Texas Market Center is set to include executive offices, a Texas business museum and a broadcast studio.

Designer KPF said in May that the exchange will occupy multiple areas of the building, including ground floor space and a 12th floor sky lobby.

The launch comes as Texas keeps attracting companies looking for a better place to locate headquarters or incorporate.

Lower taxes, friendlier rules and a more practical political climate have become a powerful sales pitch, especially compared with California and New York.

The old guard has noticed. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have both opened exchanges in Texas, offering companies the chance to dual list on the new duplicate venues at no cost.

That reaction tells the real story.

When the giants start planting flags in Texas, it is because they know the money, talent and ambition are moving.

Wall Street is not vanishing tomorrow, but its monopoly on prestige is taking a hit.

Y'all Street is no longer a punchline, it is a live market in Dallas with heavyweight backing and a very Texas sized appetite for growth.

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