A New York Stock Exchange membership sold yesterday for $1 million, the lowest price in a decade, as electronic stock-trading makes it harder to make money on the floor of the world’s biggest stock market.

A second seat sold for $1.015 million, the NYSE said on its Web site. The transactions follow a $1.025 million sale Wednesday. Prices are now down about 63% from a peak of $2.65 million in 1999.The price of an exchange lease, which offers trading rights and provides revenue for seat owners, has dropped about 83% since reaching $360,000 in 2001.

“The returns on those seats are less and less,” said a former exchange employee who is a managing director at Newark, N.J.-based Algorithm Trading Solutions, George Rodriguez. “There are fewer people who want to be on the floor. There’s less need to be on the floor.”

NYSE volume has changed little since 2002, and volatility is at a nine-year low, as measured by the Chicago Board Options Exchange SPX Volatility Index. About 70% of trades now bypass floor brokers, and 10% are executed automatically and don’t involve a specialist, who typically pairs up orders and trades for his or her own account.

The two seats yesterday changed hands at the lowest prices since 1995, when one sold for $785,000, according to the exchange. About two-thirds of a total of 1,366 seats are leased out. A NYSE spokesman, Ray Pellecchia, attributed the price drop to falling commissions, low volatility, and low volume.

“We are actively looking at a number of issues relating to the exchange’s organization, ownership structure, and business plan,” Mr. Pellecchia said, declining to elaborate.

Some seat buyers are counting on an initial public offering to rescue their investments. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange sold shares to the public in De cember 2002 for $35. CME shares today rose $4 to $221.50 on the NYSE.

The NYSE’s Ccief executive, John Thain, has said the exchange needs a new business plan before it converts from a not-for-profit membership organization into a publicly traded forprofit company. Automatic execution is likely to increase under a plan to create a more electronic “hybrid market,” he has said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also rewriting trading rules that may undermine the NYSE’s 80% market share in its listed stocks. Mr. Thain has said the SEC’s latest plan would force all markets to become purely electronic.

Algorithm’s Mr. Rodriguez expects the NYSE to maintain its role as the dominant exchange.

“While seat prices may go south short term, long term the franchise is still good,” he said. Mr. Rodriguez helped develop the NYSE’s electronic Designated Order Turnaround system, known as SuperDot, the electronic system that delivers orders directly to specialists.