Nasdaq becomes more and more like a “normal” exchange every year. Historically, they’ve always just done their own thing for their own purpose, so it makes sense.
** for those that don’t know: NASDAQ stands for “National Association of Security Dealers - Automated Quotation (service)”. It was forced into existence by the SEC. Prior to that there was only the NASD, who traded blocks of shares amongst themselves so that each individual security dealer could meet the needs of their customers. As the trading amongst themselves grew larger and larger, the SEC added progressively more regulation until finally the had to build the NASDAQ computer system, which nobody would even recognize today.
So again, they were always separate from everything else and did things that made sense according to their own needs. They were very different until they were no longer allowed to be different.
Don’t disagree there, though this has been status quo for nearly two decades now.
By that measure regional exchanges were their own beasts for a long time. The environment has definitely streamlined a ton since RegNMS was implemented and the exchanges consolidated a bit.
Even the technology stacks the current markets run are basically identical within three families of design (even the upstart markets, and even those that are not directly licensing technology from ICE, Nasdaq, or Cboe). Differentiation just doesn’t pay like it used to.
Shit, MIAX is just the old BATS/Cboe technology with some local flair. There are multiple derivatives of the old Island/INET tech stack, mainly in ATSs, but the iteration Nasdaq is operating on only diverges where extreme message volume factors in.
No one is silly enough to want the abomination of design that is Pillar, but the point still stands that technical differentiation isn’t really important in the way it was 15-20yr ago.
** for those that don’t know: NASDAQ stands for “National Association of Security Dealers - Automated Quotation (service)”. It was forced into existence by the SEC. Prior to that there was only the NASD, who traded blocks of shares amongst themselves so that each individual security dealer could meet the needs of their customers. As the trading amongst themselves grew larger and larger, the SEC added progressively more regulation until finally the had to build the NASDAQ computer system, which nobody would even recognize today.
So again, they were always separate from everything else and did things that made sense according to their own needs. They were very different until they were no longer allowed to be different.