Securities Exchange Operation
The industry — Securities and commodity exchanges
Base industry report for 5232 →- Establishments · CanadaA
- 65
- Under 10 employeesA
- 62%
- Establishments · USA
- 53
- Employment · USA
- 6,270
- Payroll · USA
- $1.6B
Of 65 Canadian establishments with employees, 62% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.
Entry signal — what decides who wins here
One thing must be trueEntry turns on a single condition that can be named and tested before much is spent. Clear it and this becomes an execution question; fail it and no amount of operating skill helps.
Displace an incumbent the screen found well defended — payments attached to the workflow, data that does not leave, a contract that renews itself. Share here means giving a buyer a reason to break something that currently works, which is a higher bar than being better.
Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.
This is not a probability of success, and it is not a verdict on you. No survival probability is published per market, and inventing one would be worse than saying so. What the bar reads is how much of the outcome sits inside an operator's control: green means the hurdles are ones a better operator clears, red means the binding constraint is capital, an asset or a permission rather than execution. Someone arriving with an advantage this screen did not assume can win a market shown in red.
Companies named in this market · 4
The binding constraint — incumbent vulnerability
An exchange looks like the purest toll road in finance, and TMX Group's 2025 shows why people want one: revenue of $1,717.2M, up 18%, with income from operations of $771.0M [A] — a 45% operating margin on a business that holds no inventory and takes no market risk. Recognition by a securities commission is a real hurdle, but it has been cleared in Canada more than once, so it is not the cut. The cut is that the incumbent is not vulnerable where the money is. Of TMX's revenue, equities and fixed-income trading and clearing — the only part a new marketplace actually contests — was $283.4M, about 17% [A]. The rest is capital formation ($297.4M), derivatives trading and clearing ($434.5M) and data, indices and analytics ($701.8M) [A]: lines that belong to whoever already has the issuers, the clearing house and the tape. A challenger venue can win matching share by cutting fees to near zero, and in doing so earns near zero, while order flow returns to the deepest book whenever spreads matter. Liquidity is the product, and only incumbency manufactures it. The 65 Canadian establishments are mostly one-to-four-person entities — holding shells, commodity and niche venues, representative offices — around a single 500-plus employer. The software sold to this industry is screened separately at 5231 and 5239.
An exchange is recognised by provincial securities regulators but competes for listings and order flow across the whole national market, and for inter-listed names against US venues as well. There is no local or regional catchment: every dealer's router can reach every marketplace, so a new venue meets the incumbent on every order from the first day.
Who you would be competing with
The operators already at scale here, and whoever is buying these businesses. In most of these industries the competition an entrant meets is local, so this is who sets the terms rather than a list of everyone in the trade.
Financials & market size — sourced
Figures that came from a filing, a results release or reputable reporting, each carrying its evidence tier.
Market size, derived
Built from the competitor set upward rather than quoted from a forecast. Published TAMs in these categories are frequently reverse-engineered from each other, so any published figure is checked against the vendor arithmetic rather than trusted on its own.
Disclosed revenue from 2 of 4 named vendors. The market is at least this large.
No vendor has both a disclosed revenue and a published share.
Only a revenue floor is known — the true market is larger by whatever the undisclosed vendors earn.
Competitor set · 4 named · 2 disclose revenue
| Name | Revenue | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| TMX GroupTSX: XA | $1.7B | — | FY2025 revenue, up 18% |
| Cboe Global MarketsNYSE: CBOEA | $2.4B | — | FY2025 net revenue — total revenues less cost of revenues, up 17% (US$). Owner of Cboe Canada, which is not broken out |
| Canadian Securities Exchange (CNSX Markets)C | not disclosed | — | Privately held. Publishes no revenue, and no acquisition price for it was found |
| Nasdaq CanadaC | not disclosed | — | Inside Nasdaq, Inc.; Canadian marketplace operations are not separately disclosed and no filing was opened for this record |
Evidence
Evidence. TMX Group's consolidated figures were read from its 5 February 2026 Q4/FY2025 results release, and the full-year revenue split by segment from its year-end 2025 Management's Discussion and Analysis, which is the only document that publishes it — the Q4 release breaks out the quarter alone [A]. The 17% share and the 45% operating margin are arithmetic on those figures. The establishment counts are Statistics Canada (December 2023) and US County Business Patterns (2022) [A]. What was not sourced: the revenue of any challenger marketplace. Cboe Canada (formerly NEO and MATCHNow) sits inside a parent that does not break it out, the Canadian Securities Exchange is private, and no acquisition price for either was found, so the claim that a challenger earns little on the share it wins is analyst reasoning from the fee structure, not a measured result. The description of what the small establishments are is inference from the size bands. The cut factor is analyst judgment. Added in completion: Cboe Global Markets' FY2025 net revenue, total revenues and operating income were read in the earnings release filed as exhibit 99.1 to its 6 February 2026 Form 8-K [A]. That figure is a global one: Cboe does not break out Cboe Canada, and the release's segment tables mix quarterly and full-year presentations, so no Canadian or North American Equities full-year figure is quoted here. Cboe is on the record to show that the challenger to TMX is a line item inside a much larger foreign group, which is the point — no Canadian challenger publishes anything, and no acquisition price for the Canadian Securities Exchange, Cboe Canada or Nasdaq Canada was found.
Where the industry talks
The associations, forums and events where people in this trade actually talk shop — where to listen before entering, and where the first customers are found. Each link was opened on the date shown.
Global industry association for exchanges and clearing houses; membership is limited to exchanges and CCPs that pass its criteria.
Equity traders across four regional affiliates (IETA, MIETA, PSTA, VSTA). 'Over 850' came from a search snippet of its About page, not seen on the fetched page.
National association of Canadian investment dealers; the Investment Industry Association of Canada renamed itself and iiac.ca now redirects here.
Global trade body for futures, options and cleared derivatives markets; exchanges and clearing houses are among its members.
US grassroots body of more than 20 affiliates in the US and Canada; runs an annual market structure conference.
FIA's annual Chicago exhibition and conference for the derivatives and exchange industry.
Daily newsletter covering the exchange, trading and clearing infrastructure business; issue dated 22 Sep 2026 on the site.
Covers US equity market structure, trading technology and regulation.
There is no operator forum for exchange builders; the conversation happens in trade bodies and trade press. The Canadian Capital Markets Association site (ccma-acmc.ca) is only a static splash image and was left off.