Lynn Martin, president of the NYSE Group, explains why investors at the New York Stock Exchange should still feel confident despite the recent Wall Street volatility and discusses the landscape for 2022 when it comes to IPOs and retail investors.

Closing Bell

NYSE President Talks Market Volatility, the IPO Market and More 

As the stock market twists and turns this year and new deals come to market. The New York Stock Exchange has a new President Lynn Martin taking the helm the start of this year? And Lynne joins me now to talk about what is in store for 2022 live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Lynn, thank you so much for sitting down with me and congratulations. My first question to you is among the market volatility that we see picking up this year, including the selloff today. How confident can investors be? The trading in these markets is safe? Yeah, that's a great question first. Thanks so much for having me today. Kristen it's great to be here on the floor of the stock exchange to have this conversation with you. I think the most important signal of confidence that investors can continue to have in our markets is that they are the most transparent, They are the most liquid in the world. If you look at the volatility we saw on january 24th, january 25th and even the week prior you saw a record amount of messages come into various equity platforms. And when you look at the new york stock exchange is platform. Half a trillion messages Were processed on each of those days with a median response time of less than 30 microseconds in us equity markets given the incredible volatility. We saw our systems held up beautifully and that's really because of the investment we made and that should give investors confidence that when they come into the market that their orders are going to be handled in a very reliable transparent fashion. How are volatile markets Lynn heavy trading volume as you're mentioning, expected to impact your own business this year? Yeah. You know, we have made a variety of technology investments over the past years. My processor, Stacey Cunningham, that was, I would say one of her cornerstones of her tenure here. Given the significant amount of investment that we have made, we can handle those peak messaging days with these uh delivering the market data, delivering the markets to the investing public in a very efficient fashion. Of course the pandemic has altered life as we know it. But the floor of the new york stock exchange still living and breathing and humming today like any other day. Is it expected to be business as usual for the floor this year. Yeah, I think it will be. I think you saw that today. We had an amazing business combination this morning with black rifle, coffee um going public via their business combination. Great performance with them. You just saw an amazing group that you just mentioned ring the closing bell. Um It does feel like we're coming back to normal in new york city as we're on the other side of the omicron search. So I can't wait to uh to continue to welcome guests here. And we saw packed podium today celebrating the closing bell. Um It is wonderful to see all of those faces here. We know we're coming off of a record year for I. P. O. S as well. In 2021 huge huge deals that we saw last year. Is that demand expected to continue into this year? Yeah. You know this year has been off to a slower start. But if you recall 2019, we started with the government shutdown. We all know what happened in the beginning of 2020 tons of volatility in markets that really slowed the company's the issue is coming to market uh down in both those years and both years. The second half. And as we get to the end of the first half, you saw a strong demand. I think that's going to be the case this year. We have a strong pipeline of companies that are looking to come live on our markets. We can see that through the filing. So I expect that we're going to have a very strong rest of the year although Q1 is probably going to be a bit more muted, especially when you compare it to 2021. Well this is the first time that we at shelter and our viewers get to hear from you, the new president of the New York Stock Exchange. What are your own goals Lynn for the business this year? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of areas that I'm really focused on. Number one. What's top of mind for ceo everywhere is E. S. G. Environmental, social and governance and how to run their businesses and disclose that they are running their businesses in a sustainable fashion. Given the business that I previously led, I have a lot of experience in talking to firms about sustainability and sustainable finance. So I'm really looking forward to helping those issuers tell their story of sustainability. Additionally, the way I like to say is every company is a tech company in this day and age, in this digital age, every company is employing technology. So I can't wait to continue to have those conversations with C. E. O. S of our amazing community of entrepreneurs and innovators but also have that conversation with those companies coming to market. How do they tell their tech story? How did they tell their data story? So those are some of the areas that I'm really focused on uh for this business. And finally we're in the greatest building in the U. S. I would venture to say this is the home of global markets. So continuing to ensure that our markets remain the envy of the world is something that is at the forefront of my mind and something that I'm looking forward to continuing to talk to policymakers, ceo. S and other market participants about what is the agenda Lynn for the new york stock exchange in Washington. The SCC is a new chair as well, Gary Gensler. What are the conversations you've had or you're looking to have with gary Gensler. Yeah. Chair Gensler and I have had some conversation already. We're going to continue the conversation and the way I'd like to describe is we're very much aligned on one objective, adding transparency and continuing to add transparency to securities markets. Being in equities or in fixed income securities or whatever the case may be. Chair Gansler is very pragmatic. He brings uh items to market when they are ready for prime time. You saw that yesterday with the T. Plus one announcement that they made around the rulemaking and and recommendations around improving the efficiencies of the U. S. Equity markets and those are really our shared objectives. How do we make our markets more efficient and continue to bolster onto the transparency that they get to the investing public. We saw retail trading this time last year absolutely surge led to huge volumes in the stock market. But retail trading has fallen off a bit since the meme stock saga as we've all come to know it. How are you encouraging retail traders to be active in this stock market? Yeah, I mean, I think what you saw during the pandemic, let's put a silver lining on the pandemic because we always talk about the non silver linings is that you do have a new class of investors. You have the retail investor who is making their their thoughts known either through investment in stocks that they truly believe in or making their investment decisions known in sustainable companies. So I'm looking forward to continuing the conversations with them, particularly around the safety and security of our markets and what the lip markets continue to bring to the public. My last question to you, lyn is about Cryptocurrency, we're talking about chair Gensler of course, more regulation on the Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency front expected this year. Is the new york stock exchange prepared to start trading an asset like a spot Bitcoin E. T. F if it does get approval this year. Yeah, so we were the home of the first crypto E T. F. It was based on crypto futures as you recall, but we have filed rules publicly to allow for trading of spot currency Cryptocurrency E. T. F. When it is approved by the sec. We'll be waiting for that Lynn. We gotta leave it there. Thank you again. Our viewers have been excited to hear from you, Lynn martin, the new president of the new york stock Exchange, just after the market closed on another wild day on Wall Street Lynn, Thank you