John Lothian News interviewed NYSE Head of Options Meaghan Dugan at the 2023 Options Industry Conference in Nashville, TN about how the company is using data and technology to handle the growth in the options market, improvements to its Pillar platform, the future of the trading floor, and T+1.

NYSE American Options is planning an update to Pillar, its proprietary technology platform, in October, after having moved Arca to the platform last July. It is on track to move Amex over to Pillar on October 23. Dugan said Pillar will enable member firms to connect to all NYSE equities and options markets.

“It’s a key technical advance at a time when everything’s shifting,” Dugan said. 

NYSE has made changes to its floor trading technology over the past six to 12 months as well, Dugan said.  “When we moved over to Pillar for Arca, we opened it up to an open API basically. So any floor OMS system system can go in and code to our spec that’s online. And Amex, when it goes online in October, will have the same.”  She said this allows people to choose their favorite OMS provider to use to send orders from the floor. 

Dugan said she doesn’t think the options trading floor is going to go away. “We are thoroughly investing in it, and it’s a very critical part to our entire business,” she said. But it continues to be modernized and improved so it will work even better in the future, she added.