Nasdaq, Inc. (NDAQ) Presents at Piper Sandler Global Exchange and Fintech Conference Transcript

Nasdaq President Tal Cohen said the CFTC's approval of Kalshi's Bitcoin perpetual futures is being extrapolated by investors into potential approvals for equity-linked products, but he suggested the market may be overreacting. The discussion centered on whether onshore perps are an opportunity or threat to exchange operators, with no concrete new Nasdaq product announcement or financial guidance provided. Overall the remarks were exploratory and lightly relevant to exchange and derivatives trading sentiment.

Analysis

The market is treating offshore-style perpetuals as a direct threat to listed exchanges, but the more important issue is the precedent for regulatory segmentation. If one venue can win approval for a narrowly scoped cash-settled derivative, the battleground shifts from product novelty to distribution, collateral, and compliance economics — areas where scaled incumbents tend to outperform on unit costs. That makes this less of an “exchange disintermediation” story and more of a margin-pressure story for smaller, pure-play platforms that lack bundled market data, clearing, and workflow adjacency.

For Nasdaq, the second-order opportunity is that any broadening of 24/7 risk transfer increases demand for surveillance, market tech, and cross-asset risk tooling. Even if trading itself fragments, the stack around it gets more valuable because regulators and intermediaries need tighter monitoring, intraday margining, and better reference pricing across overnight sessions. The bull case is not higher transaction share tomorrow; it is a larger addressable market for software and market infrastructure over 12-36 months if perpetuals normalize outside crypto.

The key risk is that the first approval gets extrapolated too aggressively by the market, causing a temporary multiple compression in exchange names before the revenue impact is visible. The real adoption curve for equity-linked perps, if it happens at all, is likely measured in years because listing standards, hedging capacity, and political optics will slow expansion far more than crypto analogies imply. That means the near-term reaction is probably overdone relative to fundamental earnings risk, especially for diversified platforms with recurring tech revenue.

The contrarian angle is that this could actually accelerate incumbent exchange consolidation rather than competition: if new products require robust surveillance and regulatory infrastructure, smaller venues may end up licensing from or routing through larger incumbents. The market is underestimating how much compliance complexity raises barriers to entry in non-spot markets. In that setup, Nasdaq can benefit even if headline trading volumes migrate away from traditional sessions, because the gating function becomes more valuable than the matching engine itself.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Buy NDAQ on a 3-6 month horizon into any post-headline weakness; risk/reward favors a re-rating once the market separates product disruption from infrastructure monetization.
• Pair trade: long NDAQ / short a more rate-sensitive pure-play exchange peer for 1-3 months to express the view that diversified tech + surveillance revenue is more resilient than transaction-fee-only exposure.
• Sell near-dated downside puts on NDAQ if implied vol spikes after additional perpetual headlines; the thesis is that the selloff is faster than the earnings impact, giving attractive premium capture.
• Avoid chasing long volatility in exchange names unless there is concrete evidence of equity-linked perpetual approvals; the catalyst path is likely slower than consensus expects.
• If equity-linked perps expand beyond crypto, add to infrastructure/software subsector exposure within market services beneficiaries over 12-24 months, as compliance and risk management spending should rise faster than gross trading volume.