The London Stock Exchange Group’s (LSEG) Turquoise went live with a closing auction mechanism after market close on Monday, as part of its most recent collaboration with not-for-profit group Plato Partnership.
In a summary of its first day of trading, the platform confirmed that Turquoise Plato Trade At Last saw 12 Turquoise members entering new orders in 76 different symbols of 11 different country markets.
The new orders included firm orders using various Turquoise Plato functionalities including continuous phase, uncross phase, persistent resting orders, dark-lit sweep, and block indications into the Turquoise Plato Block Discovery platform.
“We are very pleased with the strong day one demand with new orders on Turquoise Plato Trade At Last, we saw broad demand from traders across European equities markets for access to the valued closing price of pan-European securities using an anonymised, broker neutral service that includes conditional order types,” said Turquoise chief executive, Dr Robert Barnes.
The Trade At Last mechanism allows traders to submit firm and conditional orders for an additional ten minutes after the closing auction has completed its price formation process and published the official closing price at 4.35 pm.
Once the closing price of a security is made public, both firm orders and conditional block indications can be submitted into the platform. The tool was due to launch in July but was delayed due to disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Turquoise is the latest to launch a tool that allows investors to interact with the closing auction, which has fast become the most important liquidity event of the trading day. Closing auction volumes have surged globally in recent years, with volumes in major indices across Europe now consistently accounting for more than 20% of total volumes.
Last year, European exchange operator Cboe launched its own mechanism, known as Cboe Closing Cross (3C), for traders to execute end of day trading activities during a 25-minute window.
“Turquoise Plato Trade At Last serves as a single point of entry for securities of 17 country markets today and complements each primary markets widely used closing auction for listed securities – including those listed on London Stock Exchange main market and AIM available in the same data centre as Turquoise – providing a greater choice of trade execution in what is an increasingly important part of the trading day,” Barnes concluded.