The Numbers Are In for NYSE Options with Our New Platform in Full Operation

At the conclusion of trading on Dec. 21, 2023, members of the team responsible for rolling out our industry-leading technology platform across both our options exchanges made their way to the NYSE’s iconic podium to ring the closing bell. They were celebrating a job well done, the successful migration of our second and final options exchange, NYSE American Options, to the Pillar platform.

An accomplishment to be sure, but the team’s work was far from over. In some ways, it was just getting started.

Today, with a full half-year behind us operating both of the NYSE’s options markets on Pillar, we are beginning to see the fruits of this effort, which began years earlier with the migration of the NYSE’s five equity exchanges to Pillar. However, in our options markets, which have experienced a massive surge in trading the past few years, the results are as clear as they are remarkable.

From the moment Pillar went live on NYSE American Options in late 2023, we saw, as anticipated, median latency drop by a stunning two-thirds to less than 30 microseconds, in line with our NYSE Arca Options exchange, which moved to Pillar in 2022. Latency is how quickly electronic messages — orders, cancels and bulk quotes— can be processed. In modern markets, this is a critical metric.

As latency came down, we saw an immediate increase in daily message traffic across both markets simultaneously, more than doubling pre-Pillar levels. This also outpaced traffic growth across the industry. Because options trading tends to come in discrete bursts of activity, rather than evenly across the day, the reduced latency removed a significant capacity constraint, allowing a greater number of messages to flow through our exchanges at these peak times.

In an industry where meaningful market-share gains are measured in double-digit basis points, NYSE Group has grown market share over 250 basis points, when comparing the first two quarters in 2024 to the last two quarters of 2023. Over 200 basis points of this increase has come from electronically matched trades, arguably the most competitive part of the options business, where industry leading technology is a differentiator.

Now that the multi-year Pillar rollout is complete, we have refocused our work. Our team’s emphasis is now squarely on further optimizing the performance of Pillar across our markets, exploring new features and product innovations, while continuing to grow and strengthen our relationships with market participants.

While we are thrilled with what we’ve seen in the first two quarters of Pillar operating across both options exchanges, we are equally excited about continuing to innovate and deliver for market participants in the years to come.