Our “Evolving Markets and Technology” panelists have seen massive change during their time working in the business of financial markets, but, as Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb, put it, “this is go time.”
Innovation has led to heightened investor interest in blockchain-related processes like tokenization. Frank La Salla, President, CEO and director at The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), said the conversation has quickly shifted to how to employ blockchain, stablecoins, and maybe eventually cryptocurrency to make a “a really good financial ecosystem even better.” He stated that doing so would improve price discovery.
“Our industry has always embraced new technology and we will always have to,” La Salla said. “That doesn’t mean we will use it, but we at least have to look into it, which is what we’ve been doing with blockchain.”
Part of the massive shift in markets we’ve seen in even just the last five years is that retail investors now have much of the access to information that used to be reserved for institutional investors and that has changed customer needs. Lynne Cook Fitzpatrick, President and Chief Financial Officer at CME Group, said the CME Group’s crypto launch was customer driven. They’re trying to meet the users where they are while also focusing on “coins that have an underlying market need or market utility.”
The conversation also covered how trading inherently is global and the importance of looking beyond the U.S.
“Smart regulation can be the lubricant for innovation,” said Tal Cohen, President at Nasdaq, which he said is seeing capital formation and risk transfer all over the world. He specifically called out Sweden as the “jewel” of Europe when it comes to its market because the retail base supports aspects of the market like IPOs and small- and mid-sized companies.
Nandini Sukumar, CEO of The World Federation of Exchanges, pointed out that what’s driving the conversation around 24/7 trading is the demand for U.S. equities from non-U.S. players.