The Tradetech Daily

Macquarie Dark Pool

Macquarie Dark Pool

The Macquarie Dark Pool (MaX) operates in Australia, Hong Kong and Japan, offering continuous crossing opportunities with price improvement for Australian equities and execution at or within the primary market spread for Hong Kong and Japanese equities.

Through smart order routing, orders have access to a range of alternate Asia-Pacific liquidity venues including SBI Japannext, Chi-X Japan, ASX Centrepoint and Chi-X Australia.

In Hong Kong, MaX is compliant with the latest regulatory standards ensuring priority is given to client orders over principal at the same price level. In other regions, orders are matched on a price/time priority basis, with no customer or venue preference other than execution quality.

Functionality and order types

The pool supports immediate or cancel,
fill-or-kill, pegging, market and limit orders. Clients have complete
flexibility in the type of order flow they want to interact with.

Access and participation

Access to the pool is primarily offered through
Macquarie’s algo suite. Dark-only algos do not post in the lit markets, and the
pool offers ‘I would’ functionality to facilitate block crossing. Orders can
also be shadowed in the dark pool while resting on the primary market.

Instruments traded

Most listed equities can be traded within MaX.

Order protection

Anti-gaming and anti-pinging functionality includes
randomisation of child slices, minimum fill size, and the opportunity to add
features like ‘mid-point or better’.

Flow types classified into strict categories to allow
clients to elect exactly which types of flow they are comfortable interacting
with.

Dark pool reporting
meets local regulatory standards and data is available for post-trade analytics
to participants.

Future developments

Macquarie monitors opportunities to improve dark pool functionality on an on-going basis.