Otherwise glittering with commercials of luxury brands, television shows and movies, one of the digital billboards at the world-famous Times Square in New York on Thursday displayed an unusual congratulatory message.

The message was from US’ Nasdaq—the world’s second-largest stock exchange in terms of market capitalization—to wish the National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) on becoming the world’s largest derivatives trading exchange by volume. “Nasdaq congratulates NSE on becoming the world’s largest derivatives trading exchange,” read the message.

As per the statistics published by derivatives trade body Futures Industry Association (FIA) earlier this month, the Mumbai-based bourse has surpassed US’ CME Group to top the future and options table by volume for the calendar year 2019. This means that NSE traded the most contracts in the world last year.

The FIA data shows that NSE’s derivative volume grew 57.27 per cent between 2018 and 2019 to touch 5.96 billion contracts in 2019. In comparison, CME Group’s volume stood at 4.83 billion contracts in 2019, dropping a marginal 0.31 per cent from 2018.

Top 5 Exchanges by Number of Contracts Traded and/or Cleared, 2019

Source: FIA

Mahindra group chairman Anand Mahindra, who is also a former director of the NSE, took to twitter on Thursday to shout-out to the NSE team for the achievement.

In a separate development, data published by the World Federation of Exchanges showed that NSE becomes the third-largest exchange in cash equities segment by the number of trades.

Vikram Limaye, MD and CEO at NSE, said the milestone is a matter of great pride for the country as the domestic stock exchange has emerged as a global leader and has achieved this unique distinction of being the largest derivatives exchange in the world and the third-largest exchange in cash equities.

“We are grateful to the government, regulators and all our stakeholders for the support extended to us over the years,” he said in a statement.