Jon Herrick is Head of Markets, NYSE.
What was the highlight of 2022?
Amid a year of tremendous activity, one of our most noteworthy achievements was successfully re-platforming NYSE Arca Options onto our market leading technology platform, NYSE Pillar. Migrating the nation’s largest options exchange to a new technology during a period of record volumes was no small feat, bringing our members the benefits of unrivaled performance and flexibility. Seeing the NYSE team successfully execute another exchange migration, by far our most complex to date, with precision and agility while growing NYSE Group options market share year over year was truly remarkable. We could not have done this without the active participation of our members. Nevertheless, our work is not complete. Next year we plan to further extend the benefits of Pillar technology with key functional and performance enhancements as well as migrate NYSE American Options to Pillar, expected in the second half of 2023.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2022?
Record trading volumes driven by market volatility, triggered by economic conditions and geopolitical tensions, was the biggest story of 2022. The good news for our issuers and members was that our hard work building industry leading technology to power our markets paid off, with our systems taking this unprecedented level of activity in stride. For example, the NYSE Group’s systems saw increased electronic message volumes once again as options trading activity set new highs. On multiple days this year, we processed over half a trillion messages across our seven exchanges and SIAC and continued to set a standard of excellence in terms of systems availability and performance. Under this increased demand, we also continued to invest in improving our systems performance. In equities alone, the NYSE Group saw an increase of 65% in client inbound message traffic this year while increasing the determinism of our trading platforms.
Who were the most important/influential people at your firm in 2022?
At the beginning of 2022, we welcomed Lynn Martin as the 68th President of the NYSE. A programmer and data scientist by training, Lynn has brought a fresh perspective to this role and led us through a truly remarkable year that saw unprecedented activity. As we look to migrate our final exchange – NYSE American Options – to our NYSE Pillar platform in 2023, there are countless possibilities for innovation with all our exchanges on a single, common platform. Lynn is uniquely positioned to help us identify and bring together core competencies across the NYSE and our parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, to find new ways to deliver new products and services to issuers and investors alike. No other global provider of clearing, data and exchange services is as well positioned to help drive economies of scale across equities, options, ETFs and fixed income.
