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The Hidden Infrastructure Powering America’s Markets: Concentration, Interdependency, and Systemic Risk in U.S. Financial Infrastructure
- ICIT Research
- 5 days ago
- 2 min read
June 2026
By Cory Simpson, Javier Nater, Hugo Holopainen, Christopher Hetner
Financial markets appear seamless: prices update in real time, trades execute instantly, and capital moves with speed and precision. But beneath that experience is a concentrated and highly interdependent infrastructure layer that makes modern markets possible. Data centers, networks, power systems, exchanges, and financial market utilities form the operational foundation for trading, clearing, settlement, liquidity, and market confidence.
ICIT’s latest report examines how this infrastructure is structured, why it matters to market stability, and where systemic risk is concentrated. A significant share of U.S. market activity depends on a specialized corridor across northern New Jersey, including Secaucus, Carteret, and Mahwah, where critical trading systems, exchanges, firms, and network providers are physically and digitally interconnected.
Key findings include:
Infrastructure concentration: Critical market functions depend on a small number of physical hubs, shared networks, and specialized facilities.
Layered interdependency: Trading, clearing and settlement, and underlying infrastructure operate as a tightly coupled system where disruption in one layer can affect the others.
Systemic utility risk: Financial Market Utilities such as DTCC and OCC serve as central nodes for post-trade processes, counterparty risk, collateral, and settlement certainty.
Hidden supply chain exposure: Data centers, cloud providers, telecommunications carriers, software platforms, and power systems create shared dependencies that may not be fully visible across the ecosystem.
Market confidence stakes: Disruptions to financial critical infrastructure can affect trading, liquidity, settlement, and confidence across the broader economy.
The resilience of this foundation is not only a government or operator responsibility. Financial institutions, investors, boards, and market participants all have a direct stake in ensuring that the systems underpinning U.S. markets remain secure, resilient, and capable of supporting long-term economic stability. As cyber threats, geopolitical tensions, and emerging technologies increase the complexity of risk, the financial community must translate its dependence on this infrastructure into governance, investment, coordination, and sustained resilience planning.
About ICIT
The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, 501(c)3think tank with the mission of modernizing, securing, and making resilient critical infrastructure that provides for people’s foundational needs. ICIT takes no institutional positions on policy matters. Rather than advocate, ICIT is dedicated to being a resource for the organizations and communities that share our mission. By applying a people-centric lens to critical infrastructure research and decision making, our work ensures that modernization and security investments have a lasting, positive impact on society. Learn more at www.icitech.org.
