Investment bank Nomura has launched its Nomura Cross (NX) crossing network and SmartDMA routing and execution algorithm in Japan.
NX went live in Q3 with stocks tradable on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE), Osaka Securities Exchange (OSE) and Jasdaq Securities Exchange. NX aggregates the liquidity of Nomura, its clients and its trading partners, and facilitates the crossing of institutional order flow, including single-stock orders, program trading, electronic trading and principal trading.
Orders placed in NX will not be displayed externally or internally, allowing participants to place orders without revealing information, minimising market impact. Crossing takes place within the bid-ask spread published on the relevant primary exchange. The orders matched in NX will be reported through Japan’s exchange-provided crossing systems: TSE’s ToSTNeT, OSE’s J-NET and Jasdaq.
SmartDMA, a new algorithm for Japan, sweeps NX and other off-exchange trading venues for available liquidity before routing orders to Japan’s primary exchanges. According to Nomura, SmartDMA optimises execution quality by aggressively sweeping liquidity from dark venues and both sweeping and posting liquidity to lit venues. The strategy employs Nomura’s smart order routing logic, which is already live in the European market. SmartDMA is part of Nomura’s ModelEx algorithmic trading suite.
“The launch of NX and SmartDMA represent critical steps forward for our Asia-Pacific equities platform and provide compelling reasons to transact with Nomura,” said Rob Laible, Nomura’s managing director and head of electronic trading services, Asia-Pacific, in a statement. “We have tremendous order flow that will now be harnessed in one place, at a given point in time, resulting in cost savings from reduced spreads, better performance, and overall lower market impact costs for our clients.”
Nomura has been building its electronic trading capabilities in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe since its purchase of the Asian and European divisions of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
In addition to ModelEx and NX, Nomura’s electronic trading products in the region also include the TradeSpex single-stock and portfolio analytics tool and direct market access to major Asian markets, including Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and India.