|
|
 | | | |
- close
- close
- close
- close
| |||||||||
This excerpt taken from the NDAQ 8-K filed Feb 20, 2008. Industry trends The liberalization and globalization of world markets have resulted in greater mobility of capital, greater international participation in local markets, greater trading volumes and more competition among markets in different geographical areas. Trading volume in the U.S. equity market has grown meaningfully over the past few years. Industry growth is driven by additional demand for active and transaction-intensive asset management, the shift away from floor-based to electronic trading platforms, significantly enhanced technology, increased participation from retail investors and regulatory changes both in Europe and in the U.S. Globally, investors continue to demand greater efficiency in trading securities, new sophisticated order types, seamless trading across asset classes and markets, and ever better performance of trading platforms, which we expect will continue to fuel growth in volumes, irrespective of the macroeconomic environment. Recent regulatory changes have been implemented to eliminate trading barriers between exchanges and to increase efficiency for investors. The adoption of Regulation NMS in the U.S. and the current implementation of the European Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (“MiFID”) aim to promote and ensure market center competition, order interaction and price transparency so that investors may enjoy lower transaction costs and more flexibility to trade financial assets in a number of different locations and methods. The most significant change is that each exchange will be forced to route orders to the market centers with the best execution performance, including price, speed, liquidity and reliability, as opposed to merely executing them. As a result of these industry trends, an exchange’s scale and technology have become very important factors in maintaining competitive advantages. Scale allows for greater liquidity pools, which is a critical criterion for where investor order flow is directed. In addition, scale provides an exchange with operating leverage by processing a growing number of transactions over an
2
existing technology platform, which we believe improves profitability. Given the recent regulatory changes in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the continued evolution of investor requirements, technology capabilities have become even more important because order flow will be driven to those exchange providers that provide the best execution performance and multi-asset trading capabilities over an integrated platform. |
| |||||||
