Real money investors sat out the March stock market rally and are probably waiting for a second one around June or July, the head of the world's biggest stock exchange, NYSE Euronext , said in a newspaper interview.

The real money investors are still waiting. I think they're waiting, they're watching. They want to make sure that what we saw in March is real, NYSE Chief Executive Duncan Niederauer was cited as saying by the Financial Times newspaper on Thursday.

And I think once they are convinced, you will know it. The market will have a totally different tone to it.

Niederauer's comments came after the U.S. benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index <.SPX> rose 8.5 percent in March, its best month since October 2002.

According to the FT, he said the rally was driven by short-term traders trying to take advantage of high volatility and that he sensed that volumes were below the level that would indicate that investors had regained confidence in the fundamentals of the market.

I think we're waiting for another rally, in my opinion, in around June or July, the newspaper reported him saying.

(Reporting by Andrew Callus; Editing by Alison Williams, Leslie Gevirtz)