Powering the next phase of market transformation

Last week, Nasdaq hosted its 18th biannual Technology of the Future Conference, bringing together more than 100 clients across our marketplace and exchange community from 25 countries to discuss the technologies that will catalyze the next era of market transformation.

It was our first in-person gathering with our exchange peers and partners in more than two years, and we were struck by just how much had changed since we last met. Capital markets around the world have been operating through a period of tremendous uncertainty, full of unknowns and firsts: we have experienced record trading volumes, we welcomed an unprecedented number of new market participants, and we even operated our markets fully remote for a period. And throughout this time, we have faced the age-old challenge of balancing short-term pressures while planning for long-term growth and opportunities.

Despite continued volatility, market performance has remained incredibly resilient—the direct result of planning and preparation that happened long before this period of uncertainty took hold. But beyond managing through today, the exchange community has also continued to invest in our next wave of transformation—one that will ensure we can continue to enhance market performance, create new marketplaces and asset classes, and encourage more investors to participate in markets and grow their wealth. By continually investing in the technologies underpinning our global capital markets, we have been able to flex, expand capacity, and effectively manage elevated trading volume when needed.

The lesson is clear. As tempting as it might be to wait for calm waters to invest for the long-term, we do not have that luxury. It is during times of change and challenge that our ongoing commitment to innovation and transformation become even more important, enabling us to weather future storms.

As we look toward the months and years ahead, we may continue to operate in a climate of uncertainty. But some trends are here to stay. Market participation will continue to grow. The financial ecosystem will become more modernized. Demand for new investment vehicles will continue to increase. And the race to meet net zero commitments will continue to drive new business models as climate innovators seek to meet growing demand.

Our Technology of the Future conference provided a tremendous platform for our community to discuss these trends, as well as the evolving role that marketplaces will have in this changing landscape. We are already seeing how the latest technologies, innovations, capital allocations, and regulatory frameworks have the potential to transform markets and the financial system more broadly.

Moving markets to the cloud will play a critical role in our future capabilities. Cloud-based infrastructure will enable consistent performance, fairness, and resiliency of markets while creating more scalability, security, and flexibility for Nasdaq and our clients. We are partnering with innovative, new marketplaces to launch their markets quickly and resiliently in the public cloud. Additionally, in partnership with AWS, Nasdaq will move its first options market to a cloud environment later this year. Leveraging a hyper-low-latency edge compute system that we co-developed with AWS, we will deploy our market into AWS’s Outpost edge-cloud solution within our own data center. We will believe that our achievement will create a standardized cloud journey for our most latency-sensitive customers as they think about their own cloud journeys as well.

There are also compelling opportunities to leverage the technology, expertise and infrastructure that underpin traditional capital markets to advance new and emerging markets and asset classes. Carbon removal credits, which will play a key role in the transition towards a net zero economy, are one example. These markets are relatively new, but they are growing rapidly. Creating a trusted carbon removal marketplace with efficient price discovery, transparency, and standardization can accelerate that growth even further. Nasdaq recently announced its partnership with CIX, a Singapore-based carbon removal credit marketplace, which will bring cutting edge trading functionalities to the voluntary carbon market for the first time. By creating carbon removal marketplaces, we can attract and mobilize investments in emerging climate technologies and solutions that are vital for combating the climate challenge.

Capital markets are poised to play a pivotal role in the future of our financial systems and the global economy. That is why I was so encouraged by the group we assembled at this year’s conference. We are a community of practitioners who are dedicated to supporting the ongoing health and resiliency of capital markets around the world. By continuing to share our expertise and best practices, I am confident we will continue delivering the transformative opportunities our investors, stakeholders and community expect now and into the future.