Financial markets data is the most important output of fully transparent liquid markets, according to NYSE President Lynn Martin.
“But then it’s a really important input to finding fair value. Data is not that different. I see a lot of parallels between personal life as well as professional life with the use of data,” she said during the “Inside the ICE House” podcast on March 8.
At the beginning of the year, Lynn Martin, President of the New York Stock Exchange and Chair of ICE’s Fixed Income & Data Services business, succeeded Stacey Cunningham as the 68th President of the NYSE. Martin has been a guest of the “Inside the ICE House” podcast in her prior role leading ICE Fixed Income & Data Services.
In the latest episode, she joined the “Inside the ICE House” podcast to preview her plan to expand the NYSE’s role as the nexus for economic growth and innovation.
Martin said she’s bullish on data, notably ESG data, adding that ESG is an emerging risk in markets. “Folks are trying to figure out how to take environmental risks, social risks and governance risks and apply them to financial markets.”
She said there is a direct applicability of climate risk to the municipal market and the housing market.
“We’re in the process of working on rolling out something related to the mortgage markets and climate’s effect on the mortgage markets,” she said.
Martin said you need to really think through where there are those risks in order to tie them to understandable, easily consumable forms of market data that the market knows already.
She added that ESG is an important area for the issuer community as well.
Martin believes that technology is the great equalizer for markets.
She said that the work that the Exchange has done on to upgrade its systems to the platform that they have today, is “the most deterministic set of matching engines that are available in equity markets”.
“We’re going to continue to roll out that technology and enhance that technology either with more complex order types, or different functionality,” she commented.
“We’re going to be rolling that platform out to our options markets in the coming months, but the code base that we’ve developed is something that’s very scalable, very easily tuned and very easily modified to adjust to the realities of the future markets,” she added.
It was mentioned in the show, that Sharon Bowen also began her role as the first woman and minority to chair the New York Stock Exchange.
Martin commented that “given all of Sharon’s expertise, particularly in the legal and regulatory area and all of the work that she has done very thoughtfully in the area of ESG, having her as a strategic adviser on areas that are going to be of the utmost importance, to the exchange to our issuers, to our markets, is a real privilege and an honor to have her as the chair of NYSE.”
When asked how the makeup of public company governance affect the quality and markets, Martin said that it adds diversity and adds diversity of thought.
“It’s not just diversity of a person it’s a diversity of perspective that you’re adding to the board. Those companies that have such diversity, take less risks. They make more educated decisions. They have a more interesting debate, they achieve greater things,” she said.
Martin stressed that the best governed companies are the ones that have diversity in their boardroom.
“We couldn’t be prouder of our NYSC community,” she commented.
