1. Samuel Gaer, Chief Information Officer New York Mercantile Exchange, Inc. FIA FIXML Workshop April 22, 2004 New York, NY

2. The Importance of FIXML FIX: – A standards-based protocol. – Widely accepted within the financial services industry. FIXML: – An efficient way to transmit standardized messages across disparate systems. – As with other implementations of XML, tags (descriptors) can be customized. – Individual implementations of FIX and FIXML with custom tags are verging on the proprietary, negating the purpose of FIX.

3. Our Vision We are FIX purists. – We want to avoid custom tags and our new systems will not produce them. – We propose a ‘North American futures exchange’ standard. – We believe that this widely accepted implementation of FIX and FIXML will benefit every facet of our industry. We believe that FIXML works. – FIXML is platform independent. – FIXML lowers everyone’s costs. Standards in... Standards out!

4. Where We Stand NYMEX ClearPort sm Trading – The Exchange’s web-based trading platform that offers access to more than 60 energy futures markets. – Accepts FIXML 4.2 messages. – Sends FIXML 4.2 messages. Universal Trade Blotter – An API into the Exchange’s Trade Management System (TMS). – Will be FIXML 4.2 compliant soon. Electronic Order Routing (EOR) – Will be FIXML 4.2 compliant. Allocations – Allocate Trades via FIXML Post Trade Processing – Trade File Formats in FIXML

5. Our FIXML Future

6. How We Get There We are upgrading all of our systems to support the FIXML 4.2 protocol. We cannot succeed alone. For FIXML to work, we need our industry’s cooperation. The sooner we, as an industry, commit to a timeline for implementing FIXML 4.2, the sooner we will all be on the same platform. In the long term, FIXML reduces everyone’s costs.