From the Pit to the Screen: How Market Makers Keep Markets Moving

Go behind the scenes of European equity options with Euronext’s Emma Rosenthal and Maven Securities’ Stuart Pyott as they unpack how market makers keep liquidity flowing—even in stormy markets. From floor trading roots to high-speed tech, it’s a deep dive into trust, transparency, and the future of price formation.

The following is a summary of a live audio recording and may contain errors in spelling or grammar. Although IBKR has edited for clarity no material changes have been made.

Andrew Wilkinson

In this week’s episode, we’re gonna talk about the infrastructure of European equity options markets. We’re gonna look specifically at the role of market makers and also some of the exceptional technology developed to integrate different stakeholders through the exchange marketplace. So joining me to discuss is Emma Rosenthal from Euronext.
Welcome, Emma. Thanks for taking the time to join me. Can you tell the audience about Euronext and the valuable role that you play there?

Emma Rosenthal

Sure. So thanks for having me. Euronext is basically the leading pan-European market infrastructure. We operate the national exchanges in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland, and Norway.
We also run the leading derivative franchise in Europe, offering a wide range of products like equity and index options and futures. On my side, I’m part of the derivatives product team, and I’m specifically in charge of education for retail investors. So my job is to make derivatives more accessible and better understood by retail investors through programs like webinars, educational campaigns, and close collaboration with our retail broker partners.

Andrew Wilkinson

Lovely. Thanks for that background. And just for the audience’s benefit, I’ve conducted several interviews and webinar sessions with Michael Barclay, Emma’s colleague over at UEX, and they’re available from the Education tab on the Interactive Brokers website.
Also joining me from Maven Securities in London is Stuart Pyott. Welcome, Stuart. Tell us a little bit about Maven Securities, please.

Stuart Pyott

Sure, Andrew. And listen, great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. So let me introduce Maven. Maven is a fast-growing market maker. We operate out of six offices globally. Our heritage is really in rates derivatives, but increasingly over the last few years we’ve been improving in the equity derivative space and also in commodities derivatives.
In actual fact, we’re quite a young firm. We’ve been making markets now for 14 years. In that period, Maven has had tremendous growth, and I think on reflection there’s two aspects which set us apart. The first one: while we embrace technology, it’s really the people behind it that drive us. And I would say secondly, we have an excellent culture. And I think if you put those two together, you end up with a very powerful formula. My role specifically is to take care of external relationships within Maven.

Andrew Wilkinson

Very good. Okay, let’s kick off with Emma. Can you explain the role of a market maker and how it differs from other participants in the marketplace?

Emma Rosenthal

Yes. Basically, a market maker is a firm that continuously provides buy and sell prices on an instrument, so they’re always ready to trade whether someone wants to buy or to sell. The key role is to provide liquidity, meaning that they make sure investors can enter and exit positions at a fair and transparent price. What makes market makers different from other participants is that they are actually requested to quote prices within a certain spread and with a minimum volume. Other participants, like retail brokers or institutions, can choose when and how they trade, but the market makers are always there to support the market.

Andrew Wilkinson

So, Stuart, let me ask you then: how does a market maker help improve liquidity?

Stuart Pyott

I think it’s a really important question, and perhaps even before we get into the how, it might be worth just touching on the why, first of all. There’s plenty of academic research that makes it very clear there’s a relationship between the amount of liquidity in a market and the volume.
If you want to increase volumes, you need to boost liquidity. We’re talking there about tightening bid-ask spreads, which then improves transparency, which then obviously lifts confidence—and so really, market-wide, we do that.

That was your question—we’re putting two things together here: one is consistency and the second is speed. When we have consistency and we have speed, we really have trust. And what trust means is really about always being there. That is about, as Emma mentions, constantly making decisions even when it might be uncomfortable to do— even when there’s highly stressed conditions in the market. You can’t just rock up when the waters are calm, right? You have to be there when the seas are rough. And I think from the end investor’s point of view, that means that they get to when they need it most.

Now, in terms of the processes that are happening at Maven: first, we are warehousing risk. And when we talk about that, that is a conversation about—we want the risk in the building, right? So, someone does a trade—we are not rushing to unwind or trying to get out of it or to syndicate it. Quite the opposite—we want that risk. That’s really where the expertise is. And I think the reason that we’re able to do that is because we have multi-asset capabilities across those six offices that I mentioned. But that really mechanical explanation actually would not work unless you had a very collaborative mindset. And I’m happy to say that we do have that—but even with that, it still wouldn’t work unless you had the right infrastructure. And when I talk about infrastructure, I’m talking about tech-enabled resilience. That means systems have to be really robust in stressed market conditions. I think we had a great example of this two months ago, in the convulsion in early April. This was Liberation Day, and I think actually that was a very important test—not just for Maven, but also for the wider market.

Now, I have to say that Maven’s performance, I think, was close to flawless. On the one hand, that doesn’t surprise me. But having said that, I think the one thing you learn in this business is to never take that for granted.

I think there’s a wider point here though, which is—it’s not just about doing more and more trades. I had quite a few catch-ups with institutional counterparts just after the real volatility, and quite a few were saying: “Super job. Your team were making some really strong PR trades for a couple hours.” Yes—but you didn’t actually trade with us. And they said:
“We didn’t actually trade at all.” But it wasn’t—not that it was known that they could—it was known that they could do it in size, if they had to. I think there’s also a visibility aspect, which was important. So the point I’m trying to make here is: it’s not really a transact relationship. There’s more.

Andrew Wilkinson

So Stuart, just drill down into that a little bit more. How do market makers then—such as Maven—interact with other stakeholders, brokers, institutional investors, to maintain liquidity and efficient price formation in the market?

Stuart Pyott

Again, I would probably couch that answer in the context of trust. And maybe let me go around the other way and tell you what that’s not. Trust is not just about blindly hitting prices on the screen. It is about reliability, which we’ve mentioned. It’s about consistency, as we’ve said. But there’s also a relationship aspect, which is important.

When I say relationships, that includes people like Emma on the exchanges, the broker community, and institutional accounts. What I would say is this: our philosophy is really quite simple. We’re just trying to connect risk taker to risk taker. That might be via a broker or direct—whatever the avenue through which we are disseminating prices, the common denominator is the same.

Three things matter. One: it’s gotta be fast. Secondly: it’s gotta be efficient. And third: it’s gotta be discreet. I would say that third one is particularly important for institutional flow.

But let’s go one by one. For the broker community—what do they want? Continuous two-way prices, and it’s gotta be quick. For the institutions, it’s about liquidity, for sure, discretion as we’ve mentioned. They also value some informational components, but also—you need to be available. Of course, all of the price delivery systems, the RFQ platforms.

Then, also for the exchanges, the conversation with people like Emma is virtually continuous. We call it market structure. Market structure basically means: how can we make markets more efficient? And I think, as we said in the very beginning, there’s this very clear link between the more efficient a market is, the more flow it will attract. So again, it’s one of these positive feedback loops.

Andrew Wilkinson

Emma, how does Euronext’s infrastructure and technology support market makers in fulfilling what they do?

Emma Rosenthal

We have built our infrastructure to be market-maker friendly. First, our trading platform, Optiq, is designed for ultra-low latency and high performance, which is essentially critical for market makers who need to quote prices across multiple products in real time.

We also offer incentive programs like liquidity schemes and market-making agreements to reward the firms that provide tight spreads and consistent quoting. In addition to that, we provide direct access to market data feeds, co-location services in our data center located in Italy.

And finally, we work very closely with the market makers to onboard new products—such as, for instance, the mini options we introduced recently—and to ensure that they can quote from day one, which helps to build trust and activity in the market very quickly.

Andrew Wilkinson

Stuart, looking ahead, how do you see the role of market makers evolving with the enhancement of technology within financial markets?

Stuart Pyott

Yeah, I think in terms of where we are right now, clearly tech is central to everything we do, right? It is the key determinant of the execution speed, the main driver of the pricing engine, and also of the real-time risk management systems.

I think increasingly we are incorporating dynamic quoting flexibility, also some elements around smarter automation. We have some data-driven modeling. But I think your question was really about the future—and I think there are some exciting things happening there.

We’re doing a lot of quite pioneering work around next-generation chips, and I think if that were to come to pass, that would be a real sea change in processing power—not just for Maven, but right across the industry.

We are also looking around the fringes of AI—but just to be absolutely clear on this, only to the extent that it would optimize some of our internal hedging capabilities. I do think sometimes we can almost overextend the conversation around technology, because it’s definitely Maven’s view that we really want to keep things simple, right?

Simplicity still matters. To the extent that tech can reduce noise or increase clarity, then we embrace it. I think we all agree that a clearer signal makes for a cleaner market. Continuous liquidity is the goal, right?

So I think tech is important, but the mission stays the same—which is about making markets more efficient, reducing frictions. And where we can embrace technology as—let’s think of it—maybe the oil in the engine, then that’s very welcome. But perhaps no more so than some of those other elements I’ve also been speaking about: the relationships with the broker community, exchanges, and institutional connections.

Andrew Wilkinson

Excellent. Stuart, I noticed that you began your career on the LIFFE floor—London’s financial derivatives open outcry venue—back in the 1990s. Can you contrast those days with what you’re doing now?
And what I also noticed, and found intriguing, is that on your LinkedIn page you’ve got a job posting for junior floor traders in Chicago. Did I read that right?

Stuart Pyott

You absolutely did, of course. It’s a real success story in Chicago. They’ve managed to really create a very powerful hybrid model. Maven is a big part of the growth that we hope to continue in Chicago. So far, our presence there is doing great—we have a floor team of eight already, and we are looking to expand that, as you can see. That’s gonna go to nine.

Andrew, feel free to apply for the role if you fancy it! But you spoke about contrasting it. I think in a sense, everything’s different—and in a sense, nothing’s really changed at all. Clearly the technology is dramatically different. But I think the common denominator—relationships—still really counts. I think it’s really the one constant, and I can’t see that ever changing.

Whenever you talk to people who worked on open outcry trading floors, they speak about the camaraderie and the importance of those relationships. I do think it’s quite interesting—when you scan around the whole market, at the panoply of market makers who are out there, you can really trace the DNA back to open outcry trading floors. And I think that’s no coincidence.

When you stood on a trading floor—like LIFFE, for example—there were 3,000 people and there was a really strong atmosphere. But you got a really visceral sense of the connection between the market maker and the trader, the market maker and the flow. And so I think really now, what we do is an extension of that. So yeah—much has changed, but actually, much has really stayed the same.

Andrew Wilkinson

I think there’s probably a French term for that—I can’t think of it off the top of my head.
Alright—there’s Stuart Pyott from Maven Securities. Thank you very much for joining me.
Emma Rosenthal from Euronext—thanks for being my guest today.

Emma Rosenthal

Thank you very much.

Andrew Wilkinson

And to the audience—thank you for spending some time with Interactive Brokers Podcasts. And don’t forget, if you enjoyed today’s episode, don’t forget to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts from. Thanks, and goodbye.