PLUS Markets Group (PMG), a London-based trading venue for small- and mid-cap stocks, is introducing two new enhancements to its service, aimed at attracting institutional order flow.
PLUS plans to migrate securities from its existing quote-driven board to a new ‘hittable’ quote board – PLUS-HQ. In addition, PLUS-pool, a dark liquidity venue, is being created to provide anonymous order-driven trading for mid- and small-cap securities, to complement PMG’s current market maker offering.
According to PMG, switching from a quote-driven board to PLUS-HQ will enable its platform to attract greater transaction volumes from the smart order routing technologies increasingly deployed by brokers to support best execution as liquidity fragments across multiple venues.
“PLUS-HQ will enable electronic market participants to hook straight into the available prices on our platform,” Nemone Wynn-Evans, director of business development at PMG, told theTRADEnews.com. “Historically, our execution services have been used by retail clients. Both the hittable quote board and PLUS-pool will now widen our appeal to institutional flow.”
Wynn-Evans also claimed that the creation of PLUS-pool will stimulate interest in less liquid stocks and create new liquidity, as clients wishing to trade block sizes in these stocks will now have the facility to do so. “The level of crossing is not the most important factor for us in creating PLUS-pool,” she said. “We are more interested in attracting new order flow from institutional investors.”
Both the PLUS-pool and the PLUS-HQ will use central counterparty services provided by LCH.Clearnet and will be available for participant connectivity before the end of this year.