February Digest

Higher volumes and more advocacy from MEMX

In February, MEMX achieved two significant milestones: 100 days of live production operations at MEMX and a consistent monthly CADV of over 1%. We’re incredibly thankful to our members and the MEMX team for helping us reach these important steps in our journey to building an exchange for all. 

Exchange Activity Highlights

Liquidity on the exchange continues to increase. We traded over 100 million shares a day each day in February, with a monthly average of 170 million shares. Dollar volume also continues to grow, now averaging 2.6 billion a day across over 6,000 securities.

Market Data Infrastructure Reform

While MEMX was founded to create competition in the equities exchange space, there will be times when we agree with our fellow equities exchanges. There will also be times when we have a different perspective on what is in the best interests of investors and the market.

For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission has grappled with the thorny, yet critical, issue of updating the U.S. equity market’s data plans and infrastructure. Recently, the Commission has made significant progress in advancing long overdue updates to how information about the US stock market is created, distributed, and consumed. MEMX, the only member-owned equities trading platform, is supportive of these developments as they go hand-in-hand with our mission to advance innovation in the capital markets through competition, technology, and transparency. 

The three largest equities exchange operators oppose the new SEC rules and have filed two separate lawsuits aimed at preventing the reforms from moving forward. While there is always room for improvement in the rulemaking process—see our comment letter with suggested changes to the governance order—the reforms approved by the SEC are on the right track. Efforts to block them through litigation put the entire industry at a disadvantage. If we are to retain the world’s premier capital markets, we need to stay abreast of the technology innovations occurring and work to minimize information asymmetries. 

With each day, we are working to enhance our Members’ experiences on the exchange. Our ability to create and innovate will continue to provide differentiation for MEMX and we finish up this month well positioned for the next 100 days and beyond.