After SEC approval, it’s time to learn what the Texas Stock Exchange is made of

There are no “ifs” anymore. The Texas Stock Exchange is now a fully recognized national exchange.

TXSE announced Tuesday it had received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, vaulting the biggest hurdle in its goal to bring capital markets to the Lone Star State and shake them up nationwide.

Now, begins the real work — or rather, pulling the curtain back on what’s been behind the scenes all along.

“It’s not like this necessarily unleashes an additional layer of work that we can go out and do,” said Bill Bailey, TXSE managing director of market intelligence. “We are very much heads down, working towards expected dates of next year.”

When an exchange files for approval, as TXSE did on Jan. 31, there is a back-and-forth and amendments, but for the most part, they just have to wait and see. That doesn’t mean twiddle your thumbs, though.

TXSE is aiming for trading to go live in the first quarter of next year, indices and exchange-traded products to go up in the second, and finally, corporate listings in the latter half of 2026, according to global managing director Marc Cunningham, who spoke at a lunch panel last week hosted by law firm Jackson Walker.

All this requires the tech platform to cross the finish line. They’re close, Bailey said. It’s being tested and tracking well with TXSE’s expected launch date.

“We’re making sure functionality is appropriate for members as they come on board. There’s a lot that goes into that,” he said. “Everything was really methodically planned out.”

That TXSE was approved wasn’t a surprise to Kirti Sinha, a University of Texas at Dallas assistant professor of accounting, and she thinks it wasn’t a surprise to them either.

She gave an example: Over the summer, the exchange had added tabs to its website where prospective traders and issuers could request more information.

“I think they were already doing this background work, anticipating this kind of approval,” she said.

Part of that is the fact that TXSE has touted itself as the most well-capitalized exchange to ever file with the SEC. Bluntly, with $161 million in backing from Citadel Securities, Charles Schwab, Blackrock and other giants, your I’s better be dotted and your T’s better be crossed.

All evidence points to that being true for TXSE, with a who’s-who-of-capital-markets team assembled, an AI market intelligence platform already launched by its parent company, and now SEC approval right on schedule.

Still, while it’s a bit of a formality, getting that final seal is not for nothing.

“It is definitely a confirmation that they’re on the right track,” Sinha said. “It’s always like, ‘What if the approval hadn’t come?’ All those uncertainties are now completely gone.”

Talks with potential issuers have already been going on, Bailey said, but Sinha pointed out that now, TXSE can speak definitively.

When the New York Stock Exchange launched competitor bourse NYSE Texas, it used its existing NYSE Chicago medallion, sidestepping a lengthy approval process and quickly nabbing dual listings from major Texas companies like AT&T and D.R. Horton.

To the extent that might have undercut TXSE’s talks with issuers while they could only trade on hopes and plans, TXSE can now compete head-on. It’s not an “if” anymore, it’s a “when you can trade on our platform,” “when you can list on it.”

“We can really start to engage, continue to engage, and have meaningful conversations with our issuers about what’s important to them, what areas we can help make their lives easier,” Bailey said.

He noted that TXSE “basically knows” the complaints and struggles issuers have had going public in recent years. TXSE was approved with listing standards that closely align with those of the existing duopoly, NYSE and Nasdaq, but has plans to innovate on those standards going forward, Bailey said.

One potential example Cunningham gave at his panel was TXSE’s three-year earnings test. He said that if you made it a two-year test, there wouldn’t be any degradation in the caliber of the company listing. But a change like that could make it easier and cheaper to go public.

In the immediate, though, Bailey said simply applying one set of rules evenly and fairly, no exceptions or waivers, is an innovation in and of itself.

“It really does improve the capital allocation and liquidity to these companies and improves the experience that a public company has listed,” he said. “It sounds subtle, but it really is a huge difference.”

As TXSE begins landing companies, and as it has already altered the trajectory of Texas and “Y’all Street”, it becomes the latest in a trio of economic developments putting Texas on a fortuitous path.

An influx of headquarters, the beginnings of a reincorporation wave as the Texas business courts compete with Delaware, and local capital markets are all working in tandem. TXSE’s approval is just the latest rung on the ladder.

“It’s a natural extension of what’s been happening in North Texas, and Texas in general, for the last 40 years,” said Dave Choate, chief operating officer of Dallas stock broker CAPIS. “We have been growing as the financial capital, initially of the southwest, and this is a recognition that we are a global financial capital.”

That spells economic growth, and everyday Texans could start feeling the impact, Sinha said.

“What it means for local people, of course, is job creation,” she said.

While a financial boom initially means white collar jobs, Sinha said that white collar jobs usually create commensurate blue collar and support work. As people fill up sprawling bank campuses and corporate towers, they create a need for people to build housing, start restaurants and staff grocery stores.

TXSE itself can’t take credit for all of that — it alone can only employ so many people and help attract so many other firms to the area — but its approval is, in many ways, official recognition of what Texas is becoming.

“I think we’ve always wrestled with the idea that Texas is maybe a little more country and a little less sophisticated,” Choate said. “Very much from a psychological point of view, this puts us right where we deserve to be, which is the top of the food chain when it comes to the global financial capitals of the world.”

There are risks to this, though. Stock exchanges specifically make heavy use of energy-intensive data centers. Currently, most electronic stock trading happens at data centers in New York and New Jersey, but TXSE has previously stated its intention to operate data centers in Dallas as well.

Additionally, as the economy grows, so too do prices, and the refashioning of North Texas into a financial hub could price people out if not enough infrastructure is built to support that growth.

Still, with TXSE officially minted as a national securities exchange, the future seems bright for its home state.

“Texas is swiftly becoming America’s financial hub,” Governor Greg Abbott said in a release. ”I congratulate the Texas Stock Exchange for the launch of Texas’ own trading platform that will spur economic development and expand the financial might of our great state around the world. Working together, we will make Texas stronger and more prosperous than ever before.”