When Lime Trading became a member of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), CEO Lugene Forte says it felt like her experience had come full circle.
“I started in the late 80s in the financial services industry, and I actually signed the book for the first time in the early 90s,” says Forte in an interview with NYSE Floor Talk.
“So, coming back and becoming a member in November, right after COVID when [the NYSE] first opened the exchange to new members, really felt like coming home to me.”
The moment came after decades of experience in the financial service industry. Beginning as a financial analyst, Forte has worked in almost every role at a sell-side broker-dealer. From sales and trading, compliance, legal, and operations, Forte says working in these departments shaped the leader she is today.
Yet Forte says today’s financial climate has evolved since her first time at the NYSE.
She says many of today’s traders don’t come from a typical finance or economic background. Instead, more traders are joining financial markets with experience in data science, applied math, and computer science, which helps them run and create their own strategies.
Forte says this motivated Lime Financial to rebrand. In 2020, what was then Score Priority was predominantly a retail online brokerage firm. By the end of the year, Score Priority had acquired Lime’s technology to expand its offering.
“As a firm, we definitely saw the void in the market,” says Forte. “We wanted to acquire Lime because of its clearly stable and powerful engine and technology stack.”
With the newly rebranded Lime Trading, Forte says the firm aims to offer tools for traders as they transition from simple web-based platform trading to running their own strategies.
“We want to service the full span of clients from a typical retail investor all the way to a super quantitative, sophisticated hedge fund. That acquisition enabled us to merge the two client bases and offer solutions, bringing Wall Street to Main Street.”
Correction: Lugene Forte is CEO of Lime Trading Corp, not Lime Financial. Lime Financial is an overarching brand that encompasses Lime Trading Corp, Lime FinTech LLC, and Lime Advisory Corp.
