From Todd Wilemon::
With two months left in 2009, it is amazing what has taken place. Under the leadership of Ed Boyle, Senior Vice President of US Options, and with the support of the entire organization we have been setting goals and ruthlessly executing our plan to become the places to trade options both electronically and via open outcry.
From Todd Wilemon: A Tracking Order is a limit order that is not displayed and only activates to trade when certain specific conditions are met. Tracking Orders allow you to always trade on the NBBO or National Best Bid or Offer while also giving you the ability to choose the size of orders you will interact with and at a price range of your choosing.
From Todd Wilemon -- Excellent news from the SEC: they just approved the expansion of the penny pilot program for options. The SEC has approved adding another 300 of the most actively traded, multiply listed options classes to the Penny Pilot Program.
Woo-hoo!
From Todd Wilemon: NYSE Amex Options is happy to announce the new Complex Order Book going live tomorrow, Sept. 9, 2009. The options trading platform that you love because of the speed, transparency and throughput will now be able to handle your multi-leg complex option trades.
From Todd Wilemon: PNP+ Complex guarantees the sender price improvement over the screen markets, without a Price Improvement Auction. It will never interact with leg markets.
From Todd Wilemon: ALO orders never take liquidity, neither on Arca, nor by routing to an away exchange. Like all of our innovative order types, the ALO is designed to give you the power to control how you interact in the marketplace on NYSE Arca.
PNP LO orders do not route off NYSE Arca; once they are posted to the book they process like standard limit orders. Non-marketable orders will post to the book and stand their ground against updates to away markets BBO (Best bid or Offers) and follow standard order processing.
Commencing on Aug. 24, 2009, NYSE Arca Options will begin accepting PNP Blind orders. This order type has been a big success on the equity side and NYSE Arca Options is delighted to add it to the suite of unique order types we offer to our options participants.
From Todd Wilemon: Come Monday, Aug. 31, 2009, options markets will transition from the linkage hub to direct order routing. That is where the ISO comes in. ISO stands for intermarket sweep order which will allow exchanges to route orders to other markets directly instead of having to send them through a central hub.
From Todd Wilemon: NYSE Arca Options is expanding the list of PNP orders that can trade on our exchange. Post No Preference (PNP) orders stay on NYSE Arca and do not route out to other exchanges. Since we will pay you to trade on NYSE Arca whenever you post liquidity, these orders ensure you stay here and do not route to other high-cost exchanges.
From Todd Wilemon: As of July 1, 2009, NYSE Options will no longer charge a facilitation fee to firms who facilitate their customer order flow. We are eliminating the fee for firm facilitation of customer orders. It’s going to zero. Yes, the price is FREE on both exchanges!
From Todd Wilemon: NYSE Arca has filed a proposal with the SEC to expand the penny program to the top 300 most-actively traded names. This would cover about 75 percent of the daily option trading volume. We have also proposed extending the pilot through 2010. We feel this is the right way forward, giving participants the true bid/ask spread while providing the marketplace with complete transparency.
From Todd Wilemon: Well without further ado, I give you are newest order type. Drum roll, please! Please put your hands together, off your seat and on your feet, Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the …”WAIT Order!”
Advanced Trading magazine has a 40-photo essay depicting our new NYSE Amex options trading floor at 11 Wall St. Each photo has a caption that tells a little bit of the story of the options market's rebirth.
From Todd Wilemon: The options industry wrapped up its annual get-together this last weekend in South Florida. The best news from conference is our industry is strong and still growing even during the current financial crisis.
Fropm Todd Wilemon: The Options Industry Council (OIC) puts on seminars across the country to inform and educate investors and traders about exchange traded options. They offer a variety of seminars from a basic class on options to a class on volatility.
From Todd Wilemon: Your favorite options trading platform that provides you with immediate, cost-effective electronic order execution will now be able to handle buy writes, delta neutral single-leg option orders (tied to stock or ETF), married puts and reversal conversions. This functionality is available for every issue listed on the NYSE Arca options platform.
In a short eight months, the Amex got a complete makeover. The magnitude of what happened was staggering. A new trading floor, a new trading platform, and a new broker trading system all went live on March 2 despite a winter storm that dumped seven inches of snow on Lower Manhattan. What it means for NYSE Amex Options retail customers and professional traders alike is vastly improved speed, capacity and reliability, with the tighter markets and more liquidity that comes along with superior technology.
Three items of particular interest in the March Traders Magazine
Pricing is one component of enhanced competitiveness; speed is another; the others are new trading tools and rules designed to maximize liquidity. And the only differentiated market model around, don't forget that one. Stay tuned here for more on this front.
From Todd Wilemon: All the feverish activity over the last several months for the debut of the new state-of-the-art NYSE Amex Options Trading Floor in the Blue Room can be summed up in two words: GO LIVE. March 2, 2009 is the day that trading goes live in the Blue Room.
From Todd Wilemon: Directed Orders help improve customer executions by providing incentives for specialists and market makers to tighten their quote spreads and increase liquidity at the NBBO. It is yet another reason that customers should come to NYSE Amex to trade.
From Todd Wilemon: This is the biggest change for the Amex since they moved from trading on the curb to trading indoors. In the newly refurbished Blue Room (yes the walls are painted blue, hence the name), NYSE Amex Options Traders and an incredibly dedicated Exchange team have been working through the kinks getting their new place up and running for March 2 Go Live Day.
Plus, results for December 2008.
One of his key points: Using transparent, regulated markets to bring more sunlight and liquidity to opaque, less regulated securities would be preferable to writing reams of new regulations.
"The NYSE and Amex will immediately move from the fourth- and fifth-largest options volume exchanges into the top three, and closer to the Chicago Board Options Exchange and International Securities Exchange than they have ever been."
Plus: More about "Nellie."
NYSE Euronext registered increased trading activity on U.S. cash equities and options exchanges in November and strong year-to-date volume gains across all its global multi-asset platforms.
Plus: One very dark day in rock-music history.
For example, if an auction occurs at $1.20, and you have entered an order to pay $1.20 or greater, or a sell order priced at $1.20 or less, and these orders do not participate in the auction but trade as part of an auction imbalance during sweep, you will trade for free.
And instead of my usual Today in History feature, here's a look at the future: we announced last night that we completed the acquisition of the Amex. Here's the press release, and an excellent .pdf recounting Amex's history. Welcome aboard, new colleagues.
Plus, on this day in 1873: Cooked.
Here's the scoop on how our Complex Order Book will work, starting in the first part of August.
Three significant articles about three significant developments in our MatchPoint, options and TransactTools segments.
A look back at 2007, and ahead to 2008.
Morituri te salutamus.
Leave it to Art Cashin -- a classic himself -- to come up with a classic reference in a historical language. Not up on your Latin? Translation and some Crash of 1987 reflections after the jump.
NYSE Arca Options has consistently offered the best price FOUR TIMES MORE OFTEN than any other market center for options that are included in the SEC’s penny pilot program.
If you send us an order in one of the 35 penny pilot issues and add liquidity to the book you will receive a credit of $0.30 per contract if your order trades!
I'm sure you're shocked -- shocked! -- to see that trading volume on NYSE Euronext markets climbed to record levels again in August. Here's our news release on the subject. If you *are* surprised, you really oughtta call in more when you're on vacation.
Plus: bonus quiz -- who said the following?
"Nobody ever lost money taking a profit."
"If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
"Never follow the crowd."
Read on for the answer.
More, more, more. Just call me the Andrea True Connection.
On second thought, forget I said that. Thanks.
"The European exchanges run by transatlantic bourse operator NYSE Euronext had their busiest day ever on Friday, as markets first fell then, in the wake of a U.S. Federal Reserve discount rate cut, sharply recovered."
Links for 9 August, 2007. Among them: results of the Traders Magazine survey about the NYSE Hybrid Market; NYSE Euronext trading volume grows across the markets; NYSE Bonds enlists market makers; NYSE lists 40 Chinese companies valued at $1 trillion total; and the world's most famous market may be at 11 Wall St., but it's not the world's biggest. Plus: happy birthday, John Dryden.
This is great news for all options traders, who can take advantage of the tighter spreads.
My name is Amy. I'm director of derivative products for NYSE Arca, and I'm going to be bringing you fun facts and updates about NYSE Arca Options, the electronic trading platform that was launched last August and has been enjoying steady growth ever since.
