Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman on the Future of 23-5 Trading | At Barron's

If we think about investors today, first, as you know, we've had a large increase in the number of retail investors that directly interact with markets. The second thing is the technology has really continued to advance itself in terms of both the market technology, but also the brokerage technology to allow for investors from all over the world to be able to trade in US equities any time during the day. So, the trading 23/5 is already happening. It's just happening in the dark. Our systems today open at 4:00 a.m. and we allow trading to start then and they close at 8:00 p.m. So, we are already trading outside of US market hours, but what we're doing is basically expanding that. At 8:00 we'll take an hour off and then from 9 to 4, we're going to expand our systems so that we can become round the clock.

What we've worked on with the industry is to bring the consolidated tape so that you have central transparency of all of the trading and quoting activity that's occurring in the lit venues and the dark pools around the world. The second thing is that we're going to put limits, you know, limit up, limit downs, to make it so we have more guardrails in trading in the international session. And then, you know, we're bringing the resilience and the scalability of our infrastructure and we think that that also will really help investors feel more confidence in trading in their home hours. And then the last thing is DTCC is extending its hours so you can have real-time clearing, so that you make it so that the system is working holistically. There are billions of investors who want to access the US economy, who want to trade amazing companies that are listed in the US and this will give them a good infrastructure to be able to do that with. And we feel that it will increase demand, overall demand, increase the pie. It will also of course increase demand for our indexes because of course the futures already trade now, the ETF will trade, the underlying will trade 23/5. And then it also, we're working with a lot of clients who are looking at how do they expand their infrastructure to support 23/5 trading and we can provide technology to support them there too. So it's a big expansion play.

Well, we are very proud of our foundation as a world-leading exchange and that continues to be kind of the center of our strategy, but we have been able to expand our business today and today we really are an advanced technology company that powers the capital markets and the broader financial system. We say our vision is to be the trusted fabric of the world's financial system. So we think about that in terms of being kind of the center of the economy from a markets perspective. Not only do we provide our markets to our US equities and options markets, but also to the Nordic markets that we own and operate, but then we also sell our technology to about 130 other markets and regulators around the world. So that we really focus on architecting the world's most modern markets. And we also then power the innovation economy. So we think about how we list incredible innovators on Nasdaq. We make those innovative companies accessible to billions of investors through our index products and then we give a lot of tools over to investors and corporates to help them interact and find each other more successfully. And then the third pillar is to build trust in the financial system. And we do that through anti-financial crime technology, compliance and regulatory reporting technology to make sure that the entire ecosystem is strong and secure as we're managing people's money and managing the capital market successfully. So it's become a bigger part of our ecosystem and we're really excited about that.

Well, we love Nasdaq as being just a brand that's good. It kind of transcends just the market, but you're right that our solutions revenue today, it really goes, it's a little bit more than 75% of our revenues. And the trading business is the other 20, you know, 22 to 25% depending on the quarter. And our solutions businesses are growing really well. What's interesting is our trading revenue is also growing really well. So we've had a lot of success across our franchise. The index business as you know has been just a really fast growing part of our business in terms of we have about $850 billion of assets under management today. That's part of solutions in our financial technology division which really is the infrastructure that powers markets and powers the economy here. Really had great performance in the first quarter. So, we really are showing that we can grow across the entire franchise.

In terms of Apple, we have the Mac from 1984. I don't know about you, but this was the first computer I ever used pretty much. It looks so rudimentary, but at the time it was so revolutionary. I remember it really distinctly. And then we have their Vision Pro. So as they're going into the future and thinking about VR and all the things that they can do to kind of transform the human experience again, then you've got these incredibly elegant VR glasses.

So this is a reproduction of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter and Qualcomm was the semiconductor company that really powered this helicopter. So thinking about the first helicopter on Mars that was deployed in 2020 and Qualcomm of course another great innovator listed on Nasdaq is kind of what I would say the inside engine there and from a semiconductor perspective.

Oh, I'm fascinated by everything in the space economy is incredible. The ingenuity that was demonstrated here is just remarkable. And yes, I find I become a girl again.

Yeah, well, first we don't talk about individual companies. But we do, you know, we look at the complement and the type, the construct of the companies that are looking to come to the public markets and we're very excited that they see the public markets as the next logical step. We do think that the public markets are ready to support companies of any size and we are very proud of the fact that we have a market that really does support companies throughout their journey. Outside the, you know, the largest names that you mentioned there are a lot of companies that are ready to come public and we're starting to see more momentum coming into the second quarter. We've had some very good launches in the last couple of weeks with, you know, strong performance afterwards both in like in the biotech sector, the tech sector, the defense sector. So, we are starting to see more momentum and we're hoping as these companies all choose to come into the public markets that they understand that we're ready and I think that there's over $125 trillion of capital in the global equities markets. And so, I think that we're ready to support a company of any size.

Well, we always think that the markets could work better and we've been on a journey with the government for many years to think about how do you make IPOs great again? You know, how do you make it so that companies can come public and it isn't such a huge change to their existence. So we focus in things of disclosure reforms and changes potentially to the timing of disclosures and frequency as well as the amount of disclosures that are required. So what's really required to give investors a good financial understanding of the company and ability to assess risk and make sure that the financials are complete but there are a lot of other disclosures that have been introduced over time that we can pare back. The second is proxy reform. You know, there are a lot of elements of the proxy process that both, I would say, that can make it very onerous for a public company, but also that are just antiquated. So, how do we continue to modernize the proxy, but also put some reform in there? And then there's litigation reform, and that's an area where Chair Atkins has been very proactive in thinking about allowing companies to be public with mandatory arbitration as opposed to necessarily being subject to class action lawsuits. And so I think those types of reforms are really important to make the change from the private markets to the public markets more smooth for companies to make it, you know, I think more attractive to be public. But at the same time, you know, we've gone through these periods of time where say the private markets and the public markets have ebbed and flowed in ways that you could say are, you know, could be improved. But we do have a symbiotic relationship between the private and public markets. It's not like we would say we don't need the private markets. Private markets are very important for capital formation, early capital injection, allowing companies to grow and expand, but it would be really nice to have more investors have access to these great companies by bringing them public earlier.

Yeah. Well, first my parents never put limits on me. For a while I wanted to be an astronaut. They're like, 'Okay, let's figure that out, you know.' So, they were really good about that. And then watching my mom, she had been a stay-at-home mom, go back to law school and become a lawyer, I think, was really such an important role model in terms of the confidence she had and the work ethic in addition to my father's work ethic was incredible. So, I think all of those things really combined to give me a lot of ambition, to allow me to think pretty expansively about what I'd want to do, but ultimately to land in the financial industry because of course that's what we talked about at the dinner table every night.