Investment Technology Group, the technology-based equity trading services group, announced today that it has introduced POSIT Now – the continuous intraday crossing system for equities – into Europe. This will provide users with access to liquidity that is not displayed on order books (dark liquidity) and help ensure that trading opportunities are not missed.
The system’s anonymity and confidentiality ensure that there is no leakage of information into the market and therefore price impact is minimised, the firm says. Also, orders are crossed at the midpoint price of the underlying market, offering a 50% saving on the bid/offer spread.
POSIT Now will complement ITG’s existing crossing system, POSIT Match, which offers users a concentrated pool of liquidity in which to match buy and sell orders. POSIT Match crosses equities at specific times; in Europe this is eight times daily within normal market hours. Both versions of POSIT will be available to institutional investors on the buy- and sell-side.
The POSIT universe in Europe comprises 9000 stocks from 15 countries and connectivity to the system can be from a number of ITG front ends, such as the Triton execution management system and Channel ITG, as well as FIX, Bloomberg and directly from users’ own order management systems.
“POSIT Now is a natural extension of our crossing business and has been launched expressly in response to client demand,” says Alasdair Haynes, CEO, ITG in Europe. “Our clients know that crossing gives them valuable access to liquidity and helps them reduce transaction cost. In other words they maximise their opportunities to execute business while at the same time minimising risk. POSIT is really an obvious first port of call for traders. Looking ahead, we also expect POSIT to benefit from the implementation of MiFID and its requirement for market participants to investigate all sources of liquidity to ensure Best Execution. I am certain that POSIT Now will soon establish itself as an important source of dark liquidity that can’t be ignored,” he adds.
POSIT has been running in Europe since 1998 and in the U.S. since 1987.