We have just witnessed a most enlightening discussion on intra-day volatility. It shows that the topic of this year’s Financial Markets Conference has been aptly chosen. Volatility is a topic that very closely concerns not only traders, but also us as operators of regulated markets. We have all been given a reminder of this by some truly dramatic trading days in the course of this year. In the second half of January, and again this month, the international equity markets experienced extremely large turnovers and considerable index movements, pushing the workload of our trading systems to their limits.