Canadian exchange group TMX has reported a volume milestone for its dark order types in their first week of trading the full list of Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture listed securities.
Introduced in March this year and fully rolled out by 6 June, the dark order types comprise dark mid-point and dark limit orders. The orders achieved a daily peak trading volume of over 3.3 million shares and averaged over 2 million shares traded per day. TMX's dark orders are designed to interact with visible and other non-displayed orders.
So far, 24 participating organisations (POs) have posted dark orders, which have been executed against orders from more than 85 POs that are “currently receiving price improvement and reduced trading costs”, according to TMX Group.
“We're excited to see that in the first week of enabling all TSX and TSXV listed securities for dark trading we have already reached this level of volume,” commented Robert Fotheringham, senior vice president, equities trading, TMX Group.
Earlier this year, TMX issued a statement criticising Canadian alternative trading system operator Alpha Group, on the grounds that the firm's dark pool would be harmful to price discovery.
TMX is currently working towards a merger with the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). Despite a counterbid from Maple Group, a consortium of Canadian financial institutions, the TMX board has stated that it remains committed to the LSEG proposal.