Sign New York Banking Credit Memo Now

Industry sign banking new york credit memo now

from the library of the new york stock exchange at the corner of wall and broad streets in new york city you're inside the ice house our podcast from intercontinental exchange on markets leadership and vision and global business the dream drivers that have made the nyse an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years each week we feature stories of those who hatch plans create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism right here right now at the nysc and at isis exchanges and clearinghouses around the world and now welcome inside the ice house here's your host josh king of intercontinental exchange we're at the one year anniversary of an unforgettable week that shaped everything in the markets in 2020 and now beyond the week started normally it was really celebratory even on monday march 9th a year ago 2020 jane frazier president of citigroup that's nyse ticker symbol c who now by the way is the firm's ceo was joined by ice data services president lynn martin to ring the r opening bell an annual right to celebrate international women's day the bell podium featured the classic filled perch a group of esteemed women enjoying the moment and welcoming the new trading day with a chorus of clapped hands as i watched in real time from the trading floor below the only notable difference was a series of elbow bumps instead of the usual hugs and shaking of hands a week earlier new york city had announced the first case of coronavirus there was a measure of concern of course but like so many things that breathlessly occupy a few days of headlines and coverage my wife and i couldn't imagine it going much beyond that before the group on the podium was able to descend down the one flight of stairs from the bell podium to my spot on the trading floor the market had dropped over seven percent that's a significant number on the floor of the new york stock exchange it triggers what's known as the market-wide circuit breaker it was put in place after the 1987 crash and hadn't been triggered since 1997 a mechanism unused for 23 years responded to the fervor and panic across the economy met by a determined mood of calm on the floor like boxers between rounds the designated market makers and floor brokers took to their corners to analyze and strategize a planned 15-minute break the markets reopened at 9 48 a.m and despite massive volume almost all of it a sell-off the markets operated flawlessly this was the start to a week that would see unprecedented volatility that would trigger more circuit breakers as the raging pandemic spread globally mixed with the first widespread lockdowns and backdropped by an oil dispute between russia and opec my colleague and our guest today hope jarkowski watched the market's response and the beginning of the country's coveted battle from her vantage point in washington dc hope along with her colleagues in our dc office serves as ice's eyes ears and voice in the nation's capital tirelessly advocating on behalf of investors and clients our conversation with hope jarkowski now the new york stock exchange's head of equities on the lessons of march 2020's volatility ticking off the biggest issues facing the equity markets and how her career has taken her from the halls of congress to the floor of the nyse that's all right after this whether it's markets exchanges or networks connection makes everything possible the connection between data and technology innovation and expertise and most of all between people and opportunity for over 20 years ice has transformed markets products and processes to make things work better faster smarter from modernizing energy and commodity trading to revolutionizing the bond markets whether it's the world's largest stock exchange or the dream of home ownership we do more than see the big picture we create it you may not know our name but we bet you know our network ice make the connection our guest today hope jarkowski is the new york stock exchange's head of equities where she leads the strategy and operation of the nyse's five equity exchanges hope's been with intercontinental exchange and the nyse since 2016 serving as co-head of government affairs before shifting to her equities role earlier this year her experience combining public policy development securities regulation and advocacy on behalf of the nysc and ice along with our community of listed companies her experience combining public policy development securities regulation and advocacy on behalf of the nyse and ice along with our community of listed companies has been impactful across the organization her new rule focuses on extending the nyse's leadership as the premier global equities exchange hope jarkowski welcome inside the ice house josh thanks for having me it's great to be here so hope when that market-wide circuit breaker hit you may have been in the only place that rivaled the frenzy happening on the trading floor you're in washington dc where you live and work it's the last year of the trump administration we're just getting to know people like tony fauci on the stage of these daily white house coronavirus briefings you've never really worked outside or worked remotely but take us through your version of events that day march 9th and the weeks that followed and how you basically adapted to government affairs work you know after that point we were in constant contact with the white house people on capitol hill leadership at the sec everyone was very focused on the turmoil in the markets and many were focused on the nyc in particular we had i had lots of conversations about what the nyc was doing how important it was for the trading floor to remain open as a symbol of the stability in the markets and frankly a symbol of the stability in the country so a lot of my time was spent just with inbounds from very worried people in washington trying to make sure that we were okay that the markets were okay and hearing how we were thinking about the evolving situation i also spent a lot of time trying to help people understand that having a daily coronavirus briefings a half hour before the market closed wasn't you know the best timing so we had some success but not total success i mean there were also calls at the time you go back and look at the clips lawmakers staffers opinionators pundits they would say why don't we just shut the markets down for a couple days just to get a breather and and let everyone take a breath yet stacy cunningham the president of the nyse and others said that's the worst thing to do yeah she said that the chairman of the sec said that and to this day it's unclear to me where in washington that a rumor originated but it was there and i heard it daily what would be wrong with taking a break i think importantly investor confidence is paramount in in these types of situations and when when the markets can demonstrate that they are resilient in really unprecedented times of volatility that instills confidence so shutting down the markets is the opposite of instilling confidence that the market's resilient and we can handle and handle these kinds of situations so during the volatility from those early days of the of the pandemic hope the equity markets are experiencing record volume levels and i think the exchange is processing i think upwards of about 300 billion messages on some single trading days a year out as you think about the last 12 months of conversations you've had with people on the hill people at treasury people at the sec what's the conversation about the markets response to covid the importance of the markets really came into view in 2020 in a few ways first as you mentioned just the extraordinary resilience that our markets have and i'll actually add to your 300 billion message number because on one day in march we processed upwards of 329 billion messages just to put a comparative point on that in the rest of 2019 and 2020 our average is around 50 or 60 billion messages a day so just put that into perspective as to what that meant in terms of the stress that was being put on the systems within nyc and within the markets on the whole and they performed flawlessly as we were talking about earlier during that time you were at a very different role at ice than you are in your current one at the close of 2020 you decided to take a different job within the new york stock exchange now head of equities this means you're coming into this seat following that unprecedented year that is so far tracking if you look at the way things are going day to day at the market another eventful one how's the transition been so far and what interested you in this opportunity to change positions on the ice team yeah i didn't really get a slow on-ramp into my new job i came in at the end at the end of november and the first one of the first orders of business was contending with some shifting policy positions around uh chinese listed companies the next was around the events of late january with gamestop and so it's been um kind of dropped into the end of the swimming pool with a lot of help as it turns out the key things that i'm working on have such a touch point with regulatory policy and to some degree politics it clarified that every business strategy decision that we make has a strong grounding in what washington thinks about it and so i'm able to use the skills that i've cultivated over my career in a different way but really towards the same end goal and so far it's going well let's talk about that career for a second because although the last eight weeks have been about delisting chinese telecom companies per the president's executive order president trump's executive order or chairwoman maxine waters calling roaring kitty to testify before her her panel in washington dc you know different year different issues but it's always a bit of nuttiness but let's jump back to the beginning of your career hope you started in the office of the general counsel for finra and i've worked in the securities industry ever since but you earned a bachelor's degree in biology and anthropology from emory how does that background lead you first to the world of washington and and also to the world of finance you're right i stu i i come from a background in the sciences i thought i was going to be a biologist and change the world and um in that way through that course of study and like any scientist i decided to go to law school so it was kind of an unexpected path and when i was in law school every day in my corporate finance class we were reading cases about wall street and we were you know i looked at the the newspaper and the above the fold stories were inevitably about things that were happening in the markets it was around the time of the research analyst scandals and you had regulation fd coming online and i thought well this is really interesting and i why not maybe i'll i'll be a lawyer and everything i do i'll just be working on things that are on the front page of the paper and that's um that and a combination of uh excellent teaching and excellent early mentoring in my early career set me on that path and so i've been working on these issues for such a long time i was thinking about this this morning that reagan ms is 15 years old and i remember working on the law firm summary memo for reagan ms when it was adopted um in the early 2000s so i've been living with reagan ms and its impacts in one way or another for a long time you live with it so long that you sort of adopt the abbreviations within the nation's capital but reg nms regulation national market system the year 2000 what is it and why is it put in place we do live in alphabet soup down here in washington and it's easy to forget that not everybody follows these things every day so regulation nms is a comprehensive set of market structure requirements that were adopted in the early 2000s that gave rise to tremendous competition in the equity markets and also tremendous fragmentation so it it took us from a time when the new york stock exchange accounted for the vast majority of market share and there were some upstart exchanges in the marketplace to a time where there are over 15 exchanges that are registered with the sec where one can trade as well as over 100 off exchange venues that account for nearly 50 percent of the market depending on the day and but it's been over 40 for some time now with all the perspective that you have on this going back you know 15 years or so or more what are the good things about market fragmentation and what have we lost with a fragmented market the good things with market fragmentation that the competition that having multiple venues presents opportunity for people to get the best result that they can because it's a very competitive environment the downsides of all that is it's created a market where market participants feel obligated to connect to these many venues in order to seek the best execution for their clients and so as a practical matter that means that the fixed costs of being in the business and on wall street have gone up at a time when the cost of trading commissions are at zero transaction costs are and correspondingly transaction revenue is at historic lows so it's created a system where regulatory obligations have driven business to a point where it's hard to make a dollar the same way it was 20 years ago and that's led to unfortunate disagreements within the wall street industry about what ought to be done about it and has led to unfortunate interactions with the sec in that same regard talking about how you make a dollar as your career progressed hope you spent several years in the private sector at the law firm doing things like writing the memo about reg nms and then you joined your the regulator the securities and exchange commissioner commission as counsel to one of its commissioners troy paradise a few months after you started another huge piece of legislation dodd-frank congress's wall street reform bill in response to the 2008 global financial crisis becomes law what is the sec's role in implementing the act it was an unprecedented time at the sec with literally an 800-page proposed rule dropped on our lap almost every friday evening without fail and it was a time of a commission who historically tends its garden of regulating the exchanges regulating broker dealers examining entities regulating investment advisors to a a new place of regulating the credit default swap market and implementing sweeping public company disclosures around extractive mining and and another various um various requirements that came out of dodd-frank so and working with other regulators and what i have to believe was an unprecedented way not just regulators in washington at the cftc and the prudential regulators many joint rulemakings such as the volcker rule and others but also working in a very significant way with global regulators as they sought to implement change in europe coming out of the the pennsylvania accord and working on method 2 and other such set of requirements so it was it was a fascinating time to be at the sec and also an exhausting time it wasn't what i would call your typical government job i mean as your aperture is expanding to see the bigger world and the engagement of global regulators on these issues coming out of the financial crisis coming out of the g20 meeting in pittsburgh you're also seeing a lot more of these corporate players involved in the ecosystem one of which is intercontinental exchange ice i'm curious from where you sat at the sec at the time how did ice become increasingly sort of part of what you were seeing looking at as a facilitator of market structure i first came to know ice when i was at the sec because we were learning uh in real time about how the swap markets worked and with this new requirement to regulate the a certain component of the credit default swap market we had to understand who was in the marketplace and ice was the biggest player and so that's how i was first introduced to the ice business model and then started learning that there's this whole new world of commodities and derivatives clearing and i i for the first time appreciated how important the ice clearinghouse model had been in the derivative space so it was very much a learning curve when it came to understandin all of those markets i had just left the sec and i was counsel on the senate banking committee advising then ranking member mike crapo on securities matters and jeff and co came to have a chat with the senate banking lawyers and to tell us about how he had just bought the oldest one of the oldest u.s financial institutions the nyc so at the time i think ice was 13 years old buying a 200 and something odd old company so it was astounding on many levels and also fascinating to meet jeff who you could talk to about pretty much anything that was my first introduction to him and a couple years later was fortunate to join his team so you joined this unique company and we should probably get this out of the way because we read a lot about how big tech amazon facebook apple they are staffing up in washington by the score offices with lobbyists and multiple firms on retainer for intercontinental exchange up to this point before you took on this new role there was alex albert and there was you we've now brought on rob eskridge but how do you do more with less it's a very roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty kind of organization and we focus on the substance and we're bipartisan to the extent humanly possible the issues that we work on are not partisan issues and so we've always come at it from a very substantive point of view and when you become a resource for substance that just naturally builds relationships because people come to you because you know that you're going to give them an honest answer and you're going to be a straight shooter and that you'll be helpful and put them in touch with the world's leading experts on topics maybe that makes us unique but i know it makes us special special in one way but sometimes like so many other companies you have to defend your interests and there's one person in the dc office whose name i didn't mention that's elizabeth king the general counsel of uh the nysc and also ice's chief compliance officer and over the course of your tenure in government affairs the nyse did take steps to defend its interests suing its regulator five times last year the exchange won its case on the transaction fee pilot and there are still four outstanding lawsuits bringing a lawsuit against a regulator is not a decision that an exchange can take lightly let alone five times in just a couple of years how does this reflect on the exchange's relationship with the sec this is not a position we would ever want to be in suing our primary regulator we now have as you mentioned five pending matters involving disputing sec decision making and so we've tried to explain through the comment file through industry colloquy and interactions more informally with the commission we tried to we've tried over the years to put forth a set of policy alternatives and unfortunately we were unsuccessful in those in that regard so when your business is affected by decision making that in our opinion was not subject to the proper rigorous analysis and is not reasoned and is not legal we have to challenge it for for our current business and for the business that comes in the future and not just our business it's a matter of good government in many respects so the proceedings that we've that we've brought against the commission are not necessarily because we're vehemently opposed to the policy outcome it's the it's the manner in which they've gone about it so we're hopeful that we're turning a new leaf at the commission with new leadership and perhaps we won't find ourselves in this situation in the future beyond advocating for your own company's interests the new york stock exchange and intercontinental exchange so much of your work hope has also focused on advocating for the 2 000 plus listed companies who list their shares on the new york stock exchange one of the things that in that regard that you've fought so hard for in your time in washington was the sec's proxy advisor rule some have said that the role proxy advisors play has contributed to the decline in the number of public companies and the loss of opportunity that that represents for main street investors what does the new rule do and why do you think it was needed at this time if you were to stop the ceo of an nyc listed company in the hallway and ask her or him what are the top two regulatory issues that you worry about if they're just coming out of proxy season it would most certainly be proxy advisors at any other point in the year it would probably be the modernization of institutional investor disclosure under 13f which is an sec rule that requires the disclosure of certain holdings for long positions on a very long time frame so proxy advisors has been a an area of focus for a long time in our list of companies the final rule the sec put out in 2020 for the first time brings those two entities specifically iss and glass lewis who are really a duopoly in the market for a pro provision of proxy advisor services brings them under the sec's regulatory umbrella through some rule making as well as commission level guidance at the end of the day the rule is intended to benefit issuers and investors by ensuring that issuers have some role in ensuring that the information that is ultimately delivered to investors is accurate and is based on the most recent information from the issuer and that it's subject to a rigorous process based on criteria that's transparent and understandable and rational there are many in the marketplace who didn't like the sec's final rule and we'll see if there are any refinements to it under the new administration the other big issue is 13f reform and again that is that is a rule that is very important to our listed companies because it allows them to have a window into who owns their stock people think that this is common information that's just easily accessible and every of course every com public company knows who owns them but it's just not true and that's for reasons related to 13f as well as the way that stock is held in certain street name or or other ways so it's not as it's not a transparent process and it needs modernizing the sec sought to do some 13f modernization last year and instead of increasing transparency unfortunately they decreased it by raising the bar on how much one an institutional investor has to own before they have to disclose this information anecdotally if an investor takes a large position in a company on july 4th under this antiquated rule set which requires disclosure 45 days after the end of the quarter a company won't know that that investor has that position until thanksgiving so this was a rule set that was developed when things were filled out in paper triple kit and you licked a stamp and put it in an envelope and walked it down the hallway and sent it to the sec times have changed and the rules should change as well so we're hopeful that that will be a priority area for the incoming chairman and the division of corporate finance outside of washington hope another big development that has spanned both your government and your new role is this renewed discussion around financial transactions taxes and stock transfer taxes at the both the state level places like new jersey and new york and if not there at the federal level last month our nyse president stacey cunningham wrote an op-ed in the wall street journal saying that the new york stock exchange isn't leaving new york yet but that threat has been wielded like a hammer in recent months and governors and mayors from more tax friendly states have been rolling out the red carpet texting emailing trying to get in into stacy's year any way that they can why should legislators be wary of implementing these levies the financial transaction tax concept is wrong for two primary reasons it's bad for the markets and it's ultimately bad for investors it's bad for the markets because it hurts market quality it will reduce liquidity it increases costs it's bad for investors in a couple ways first and foremost taxes are always passed on so proponents of an ftt that believe that they are taxing wall street to help main street are actually doing the opposite because that tax is going to be passed on through intermediaries down to the end client and that incline is an investor in a public pension fund they're an investor in a 401k and there may be an actual employee of the financial services industry that will move out of state if they're subject to a tax so it's it's a short-sighted way of looking at trying to solve what is a very real question particularly today in as states are fought as states are finding themselves with incredible budget shortfalls coming out of covid i'm very sympathetic as to why it's an appealing idea but it just doesn't work at the federal level there are a lot of open questions about what the approach is going to be you have an administration that has not yet said one way or the other whether they support or don't support the concept but the propos there are proposals out there that are most certainly going to work their way through the congress a lot is being debated and it's too early to tell but in this environment it is definitely going to receive a lot of attention and have a lot of momentum as compared to years prior and we will go from years prior to years looking ahead after the break hope jarkowski the new york stock exchange is head of equities and i turn our attention to the stats that are dominating equities from tick sizes to the number of markets and how retail participation is changing the playing field that's all coming up right after this historical data can offer insight into the direction of markets yet data processing collection and storage can be challenging and costly [Music] to simplify your data access needs and help find efficiencies we launched ice data vault a cloud-based platform that enables you to access tick history for global exchanges as well as our proprietary data source from our real-time feed back-test your trading strategies to assess performance and viability conduct transaction cost analysis and support compliance requirements input data into surveillance systems to help detect and prevent abusive or illegal trading activities access over 10 years of deep tick history across asset classes get tick data for an entire market or on an underlying list of instruments access additional securities is needed with flexible delivery options to complement your workflow simplify your historical data management with ice data vault [Music] welcome back before the break hope jarkowski the new york stock exchange's head of equities and i were reflecting on her career path and some of the current advocacy initiatives that she's helped manage in washington for the new york stock exchange hope now looking at sort of your different role your your new role as head of equities you know so many of your counterparts at the nysc are spending their time helping bring new corporate issuers to market the idea that uh more companies should be public than are now from your perspective why is it so important to have a robust ipo market the rigor of being a public company the transparency that comes with being a public company makes companies better citizens so we want companies to go public as early as they can we're very focused on creating pathways of all sorts for that to happen on the nyc a running theme we've heard from the exchange when it comes to the new path to the public markets is the democratization of investing why is this such a pressing topic now we think a lot about the bifurcation of wealth and the wealth divide in this country and access to the financial markets for with respect to companies going public but also as i'm sure we'll get to later in the conversation the way that people access the markets is severely important question that we're all thinking about like so many other folks i watched uh chairwoman maxine waters of the house financial services committee oversee these hearings for robin hood and gamestop a few weeks back notable among the representatives who were clearly immersed in market structure was uh french hill the representative from little rock arkansas who was a guest on this show some time back but he's sort of the exception rather than the rule we've had the financial services committee a delegation from the committee up to the new york stock exchange to kick our tires show them how we operate talk about the journey that you go from being elected and getting this committee assignment to actually learning the substance of what's going on in our capital markets where if there is one is there a disconnect between service in washington and understanding wall street yeah it's a complicated area and it it takes time and repetition to learn it and time and repetition is sometimes not something that a lot of washington policy makers have so in that regard it's easy to glum on to rhetoric and one-liners and things that will get you a sound bite in what is clearly a 24-hour news cycle and that's unfortunate because it it means that the importance of our markets isn't appreciated to people who have a lot of power to make decisions about how they operate we are in the early days of a new administration and awaiting the confirmation of president biden's pick to head the securities and exchange commission gary gensler wearing both of your old hat and your new hat if you were to wave a magic wand what would you hope to see from chairman gensler's sec she comes to the commission with such an interesting set of perspectives different not necessarily better but different than some of the other chairman that we've had in recent years he has markets experience he he was on wall street for a period of time he has written and implemented legislation specifically the dodd-frank act and he carried out the lion's share of its implementation at the cftc during the financial crisis recovery and he's spent a lot of time with global regulators so going back to the what we discussed earlier about how important that global perspective is i think he's just going to have a very fresh take on a markets oriented and fresh take on how the equity markets and how not just trading but also public company regulation how it operates where there's some inefficiencies and whether there are frameworks from other parts of the markets other asset classes other jurisdictions that might make sense so i my hope is that he's going to be very open-minded with some of the ideas that we've that we've tried to put forth in prior commissions without success and we're really excited to see him take the helm and see where he's going to go let's uh focus on maybe one of these issues that you could sort of put over the transom at the sec and hope it gets uh taken up harmonizing tick size requirements is one of those and while it may sound like a wedi market structure point the issue is emblematic of the retail trading trend and the shift of trading volume to these off exchange venues over the past year tell us why increased retail investing means more trading off exchange and what tick sizes has to do with it yeah harmonizing tick sizes is really a way of just letting the exchanges compete we're handcuffed because of reagan ms in a couple of in a number of ways and most importantly our ability to price in sub-penny increments and so this harmonizing tick increments as unexciting as that sounds would be a hugely impactful way for us to allow us to compete for order flow that is currently happening in off exchange venues that don't have as much transparency you can go back to the early 2000s when stocks were traded in 116 tick sizes or even 1 8 tick sizes then in the in 2005 the sec's sub penny rule required most stocks to be quoted in these one cent increments it seems like there is a correlation between the rise of electronic trading and the smaller tick sizes can you explain that yeah the retail experience is better than ever now in today's market so lots can be said about the advent of electronic trading and what that means to retail investors at the end of the day spreads are really tight and investors have a great experience and that's really what matters the markets are here for the benefit of issuers and investors and the rest of it is kind of a squabble over the rent with arket participants in 2020 alone talking about the number of players on the stage now hope there were three new equity exchanges launched which now bring the total number of venues in the united states to 16. the new york stock exchange group alone operates five of these venues there are reportedly even more exchanges that plan to launch in the near future what does this expansion of the number of venues mean for market participants we spend our time thinking about how to make our technology competitive how to harness the same technological expertise across our platforms that makes our systems more resilient it makes the workflow easier for customers to interact with and so over the past couple years we spent a ton of time and investment into our pillar technology system which we rolled out for the five equity exchanges and we're working towards a late 2021 advent of pillar technology for our options markets so while the markets are fragmented in some ways the consolidation and delivering of best-in-class technology is a way of making the environment more beneficial to our customers and and end investors so we're really focused on those pieces of it at the end of last year the sec approved the new york stock exchange's plan for direct listings with a capital raise we'd seen direct listings happen in the prior years spotify and slack that was when they weren't raising new capital because they had all the money they wanted but along with the surge in specs how are these new avenues to going public really reshaping the landscape of listed companies our job is to give as many pathways to the public markets within the bounds of the federal securities laws as we can and people will take their own path it's not something for us to dictate it's what works for the company at the time and the direct listing 1.0 version was a very special initiative that the nyse pioneered the capital raise will be a different flavor in that it'll allow companies to have a direct listing and also a capital raising opportunity and then you have the special purpose acquisition company or spac which is yet another pathway that companies can take to the public markets all are subject to sec regulation and companies have the ability to choose their own path and the nysc is our job is to make the road to public as free of potholes as we can right before you and i started this conversation you sent an email to the new york stock exchange management team with a news release from the sec sec announces enforcement task force focused on climate and esg issues we're reminded by a recent piece in barron's this stark statistic hope now that one in every three dollars under professional management by these huge asset management firms now use environmental social and governance or esg criteria how do you think esg data is going to change the face of investing in the years ahead yeah esg is underpins uh one out of three dollars in portfolios today and it's really a fundamental question about what is the role of government in advancing change in this area historically it has been a very markets driven approach because investors are asking companies to disclose information about their environmental social and governance practices it's there are lots of entities out there that provide ratings as to how good of a job companies are doing in that regard including apropos of our earlier discussion proxy advisors now i think we're at the tipping point of what role does the sec which is a disclosure and enforcement agency what role does the sec have in advancing esg practices in in america and so it's very much an open question as to what they're going to do i suspect it's going to start with climate change disclosure proposals and at least at minimum a study and deep thought on what ought to be done so we'll see i think it's a top priority for the new sec and there's going to be a lot of interesting developments and it's not going to be two years before we see them i think it's first hundred days first hundred days and comparing it to a year ago hope now as we wrap up our conversation thinking about where we started it this image of jane frazier and the the team from citigroup up on the podium to mark international women's day in march of 2020 but that's also when this volatility started as a result of the oncoming pandemic we are going to be publishing this episode dropping it on international women's day 2021 and today there are more women than ever working in finance even reaching 50 or more in certain areas of the industry but female traders remain a distinct minority on the floor of the new york stock exchange and and in trading generally what are your thoughts about that and and how does that change um i might have a background in biology and anthropology but i'm not a scientist on this and i don't pretend to know the finer points of the data but i think there's lots of work to be done and it starts early and it ends in the c-suite so it starts with encouraging girls and providing access to stem education early on i have a daughter who i think about these questions all the time i want i want to set her and other young girls up for success with to get involved in stem education as early as possible it's providing investor education which is something we're really focused on here whether that education should be specific to women is a different question but just providing americans with access to education about the financial markets is critically important the more the more you know the less intimidated that you are so that's really important and continuing to provide a pipeline for women to come into the financial industry and then finally where women fit in on corporate boards and the role that they have in the c-suite we're focused on we've been focused on that for quite some time at the nyc with our board advisory council and trying to address the pipeline issue for companies who want to have women involved in their management teams or their board but they don't know they're struggling to find those women and so you know we're serving a very exchange function of matching buyers and sellers in this instance matching those who are interested in having women on their boards and women who are interested in being on boards so i think there's a ton of work to do and it starts very early and it requires time and repetition and grit to get it done and but it's possible and i hope that there's a role that that i can play and that the nyc can play from the makeup of corporate boards hope to the actual community and population of retail investors the gender gap translates into the retail market a recent article in the wall street journal found that trading platforms from those aimed at younger investors like robin hood that we were discussing earlier to industry star wars like fidelity are still disproportionately male how can more women be encouraged to invest in who bears responsibility for increasing financial literacy regardless of gender we have the responsibility and the obligation to make it happen where we sit in seats where we have access to the information and we have plenty of ways to um to provide it so i think as an industry it's incumbent on us to figure out ways to deliver that information we've covered a lot of ground in our conversation hope but one final question as covid the new biden administration and geopolitics continues to test market resilience in 2021 as it did in 2020 what are going to be your key focus areas for i guess the next 10 months of this year as you lean further into your head of equities role at the new york stock exchange i'm really focused on advancing our business through constructive dialogue with our customers with investors and with policymakers there's a lot of change afoot in washington and both at the regulatory front and political all of which touches our business so we have to think about how we're going to tell our story how we're going to tell the story of resiliency and the importance of the financial markets have played and the nyc's role in that well on that note hope it's been a great tour from washington to wall street and and you've been a wonderful tour guide and we thank you so much for joining us inside the ice house thanks for having me josh that's our conversation for this week our guest was hope charkowski the new york stock exchange's head of equities if you like what you heard please rate us on itunes so other folks know where to find us and if you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show email us at icehousetheice.com or tweet at us at icehousepodcast our show is produced by grace devlin with production assistance from pete ash and ian wolfe i'm josh king your host signing off from the library of the new york stock exchange thanks for listening talk to you next week information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified neither ice nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content herein all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity you