Doug Clark is Managing Director, Equity Product Design, TMX Group.
What were the key theme(s) for your business in 2022?
One of the key themes for TMX was what we refer to as “self-disruption.” We are continuously innovating for our clients and decided to disrupt ourselves by asking our clients how we could improve on the executions they receive. As a result, we created a host of new order types, many involving our dark pool. In June, we announced an agreement with IEX to build our own version of their D-Limit and D-Peg order types. Finally, we ran analytics with clients to show them which order types yielded the best results for their trading style.
What was the highlight of 2022?
The highlight of 2022 was the performance of our dark pool TSX DRK. TSK DRK became Canada’s number one dark pool in 2022 (by value traded). We are the leader in the institutional dark market with interlisted and S&P/TSX 60 index names. A key differentiator was the introduction of PDL order type and how we rolled that out to clients; by walking clients through how to use the order type, we ensured they were getting the most out of the product. The performance of TSX DRK is a direct result of our commitment to our clients.
What trends are getting underway that people may not know about but will be important?
After years and years of low inflation, we now have actual inflation. That has spurred enormous interest in interest-rate-driven securities—futures, options, and fixed income ETFs. We have extended the hours of the Montreal Exchange (MX) to coincide with derivatives trading in the Asia Pacific region and are now open for trading almost 24 hours a day. MX has also broadened its suite of offerings along the interest rate curve. We cannot predict where interest rates will go, but we think this trend toward interest-rate-driven securities is going to be with us for a while.
