We’re Going To Miss You Eric Noll

noll

Yesterday, we learned that Eric Noll, EVP of Transaction Services at Nasdaq, would be leaving the firm  to become President and CEO of Convergex .  We wish Eric well in his new position and we are certainly going to miss him.  His comments in trade magazines and at industry sponsored roundtables have inspired many Themis Trading blog posts.  Here are some of those comments:

December 18, 2012 Testimony before the Senate Banking Committee:

Many in the public arena vilify HFT as a business model issue. It is our view to always caution against such sweeping criticism.   We find that HFT trading tightens spreads and adds very valuable liquidity – certainly positive for our markets.  The academic evidence about HFT supports the fact that they generally add value to the market.”

September 27, 2012 – Traders Magazine article titled  “Exchanges See No Unfairness in Data Delivery Speeds”

“The latency differential between public and private feeds is due to the number of “hops,” or aggregation stages necessary when consolidating data for the public feed. The processing time alone is going to add some degree of latency to the system.”

“The direct feeds are much richer. There’s much, much more information. And it’s not just to the advantage of the prop trading firms, but to all broker-dealers who take those direct feeds. They want that richer data set.”

May 23, 2012 WSJ article after the Facebook IPO failure titled  “Nasdaq: Hindsight Says to Delay IPO”

 In comments to The Wall Street Journal following the call, Mr. Noll said, “If we had known that our solution was inadequate, we would have fixed the issue with the right solution before going forward.” 

High-frequency trading firms, known for the heavy burden they place on exchange systems, played no role in Nasdaq’s problems opening up Facebook’s shares for trading Friday morning, Mr. Noll said on the conference call

November 15, 2011 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

“The unintended consequences of the market fragmentation has been a lack of liquidity and price discovery in listed securities outside of the top 100 traded names and a disturbing absence of market attention paid to small growth companies by all market participants including exchanges.”

November 15, 2011 – Bloomberg article “Payments to Market Makers May Improve Trading in Smaller Stocks”

 Nasdaq OMX also plans to propose liquidity payment programs by issuers in its new BX Venture Market, which caters to smaller companies, and for “less-followed ETFs,” Eric Noll, executive vice president for transaction services, said today. The exchange company would collect payments from the issuers and distribute them to market makers, he said.

May 20, 2010 Testimony before the Senate Banking Committee

Our markets are strong, despite the seventeen minutes of unusual trading that occurred between 2:39 and 2:56p.m. on May 6th.”