MIAX’s stated strategy is to build a diversified revenue stream across multiple asset classes and geographies.

Thomas Gallagher

Thomas Gallagher, chair and chief executive of MIH, said: “The investment will provide MIH with additional funding to expand strategic partnerships in financial futures and proprietary products and will also provide capital to pursue acquisitions in the US and internationally to accelerate our continued growth.”

One initiative the capital injection is set to contribute to is the construction and fit-out of its new physical trading floor in Miami, Florida for MIAX Sapphire. The electronic exchange launched on August 12, 2024, with the trading floor in Miami – initially scheduled for H2 2024 now set to go live in 2025. 

Read more – Open outcry: A renaissance? 

 The investment is also set to contribute to the development of MIH’s agricultural and financial futures businesses on its US futures exchanges Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) and MIAXdx. 

In addition, it will fund MIAX’s expansion plans into new international markets and the development and trading of new proprietary and other financial products. 
  
“Tom Gallagher and the leadership team at MIAX have successfully engineered a technology-driven family of exchanges that set a new standard of reliability and excellence in the US options trading industry. Our investment, along with ample dry powder to help support future growth, reflects our confidence in MIAX’s potential,” said Gaurav Seth, managing director, head of capital solutions, Americas at Warburg Pincus.

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Andrej Bolkovic

Andrej Bolkovic, chief executive of OCC, said: “OCC congratulates MIH on the launch of its fourth listed options exchange. As the central counterparty clearinghouse for all US listed options, we are pleased to offer our clearing and settlement capabilities to MIAX Sapphire and to support the exchange-traded options industry’s continued growth.” 

Miami International Holdings (MIH) – MIAX’s parent company – confirmed on Tuesday 17 October that it was set to launch a new US options electronic exchange and physical trading floor, following its application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to become a national securities exchange. 

The MIAX Sapphire electronic exchange officially launched on 12 August 2024 and is MIAX’s fourth US listed options exchange.

Thomas Gallagher, chair and chief executive of MIH, explained that “[the] launch of MIAX Sapphire provides our members, liquidity providers and market makers with a new exchange designed to meet their evolving demands for improved access to options liquidity.

“The launch of our fourth US options exchange provides our market participants with access to 100% of the multi-listed options market, all supported by our proprietary technology designed to enhance liquidity and promote improved price discovery.”

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Set to launch on 12 August, the new electronic exchange will operate using a taker-maker pricing and price-time allocation model.

The physical trading floor is expected to go live in 2025 and will be the first national securities exchange to be established in Miami, Florida.

“The launch of MIAX Sapphire provides our members, liquidity providers and market makers with a new exchange designed to meet their evolving demands for improved access to options liquidity,” said Thomas Gallagher, chair and chief executive of MIH.

“The launch of our fourth US options exchange also provides our market participants with access to 100% of the multi-listed options market, all supported by our proprietary technology designed to enhance liquidity and promote improved price discovery.”

First announced in October last year, the new trading venues will include a “next generation” trading floor, a separate office space for internal employees and market participants, and broadcast media space.

“The SEC’s approval of MIAX Sapphire represents a significant milestone for MIH as we execute on our strategy of operating exchanges built using our proprietary trading technology designed to support the high performance demands of the US derivatives industry,” said Douglas Schafer Jr., executive vice president and chief information officer of MIH.

“The launch of the MIAX Sapphire electronic exchange will be followed by the opening of our state-of-the art trading floor in Miami in 2025. Construction of the new MIAX facility is well underway and we are excited to showcase this new facility to the industry when it opens next year.”

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Despite the indisputable decline in physical trading practices, it is enduring within an increasingly technological capital markets world which has already put innumerable out-dated practices out of fashion. Market opinion – and moves – suggest that mourning the

Like the return of old Nokia’s and ‘dumbphones’ in the era of the smartphone, a hungering for print in the age of digital, and the comeback of the polaroid camera and vinyl, perhaps there’s just reason why these concepts were once deemed great.

Following the announcement from MIAX last October about plans to launch a new US options electronic exchange and physical trading floor, The TRADE wanted to delve into why open outcry has persisted and the potential for a quiet resurgence of the dying practice. 

Charles Dolan, former executive floor governor at the NYSE, and current COO of Green Impact Exchange (GIX), tells The TRADE that in his experience the human element of trading is a critical component in times of stress, remaining valuable despite technological advancement.

“In the past there were 5,000 people who worked on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and now there’s probably 300. We couldn’t continue to do what we were doing manually in an electronic world. That being said, human judgement is critical in terms of taking control of situations that get out of hand. That’s the overarching thought process as to why [physical trading floors] are important.” 

The value placed on the face-to-face auction system, though indisputably less than in times gone by, is proven by its prevailing presence, with MIAX just the latest to invest in the practice. 

Once approved, MIAX’s new options venue, named MIAX Sapphire, will open a physical trading floor in Miami in H2 2024, with plans to commence electronic trading operations next quarter, pending regulatory approval from the SEC.

At the time, Shelly Brown, executive vice president, strategic planning and business development, Miami International Holdings, explained that the new exchange, combined with a live trading floor, is set to be particularly effective in the trading of those larger, more complex orders.

Echoing this notion, Anthony Montesano, head of derivatives market structure at Cboe, tells The TRADE that in his experience it is the larger, more complex orders that are routed to the floor, as more sophisticated, orders often want – and benefit from – a little bit more high touch versus the very simple order flow.

He explains: “If somebody’s entering a huge notional-sized order into the marketplace, they might not want to put that on-screen. If the order is routed through a floor broker, they can source liquidity, manage the order and get true price discovery.

“When you look on-screen, the size and price you see in the screens isn’t necessarily the full market, it’s what the market makers are comfortable quoting electronically. There’s often much, much more liquidity behind those on-screen prices. When brokers are facing off with a whole crowd full of highly capitalised traders, they can work the order a bit better, control the execution and have more effective price discovery.”

Read more: Farewell open outcry

Speaking to The TRADE, Daniel Labovitz, former head of regulatory policy at the NYSE and current chief executive of GIX agrees, suggesting that though the market has been focused on commoditising trading faster and cheaper, there is a potential for this to affect the quality of execution, in particular when trading is atomised and one is trying to move a large position.

He further asserts that there is something to be said for a bespoke approach to trading: “It’s the reason that people like to make their own lattes instead of getting it out of a machine, because it tastes better if you can get exactly what you want.”

Strength in diversity, amid volatility

There is the undeniable importance of human presence in times of increased volatility – well documented across the industry. As Graham Sorrell, managing director and head of EMEA and APAC equity, currency and derivatives trading at State Street Global Advisors, previously put it, we are a long way from the stage where the only role of the human is to feed the dog that keeps the human from touching the machine.

With the increasing prevalence of macro-economic divergences, human intervention across the lifecycle of trading remains an important element as even highly developed systems continue to demonstrate gaps when detecting disruptions.

“Human involvement in the kind of market-making that takes place there is important because of those instances when things get out of control. You need the ability for people to react and to hit the brakes and slow things down for a second,” says Dolan, adding: “Now, they’re monitoring everything that’s going on with electronics. So that if something happens, it can be sorted off floor. However, I think that there’s still a reason that the NYC has found value in having those folks down on the floor doing what they do.” 

Taking the flash crash of 2010 as an example, Labovitz highlights how the circumstances around how the events unfolded demonstrated a key difference between NASDAQ and NYSE listed stocks – where electronically traded NASDAQ stocks tended to drop faster and farther than the NYSE listed stocks, with the difference being human intervention.

“A computer goes with a stimulus-response – you poke it, and it does something – with the flash crash, it was the humans on the floor thinking, ‘there has to be a glitch somewhere,’ and responding, while the computers were just repeatedly stub quoting. So it kept trading down, down, down, whereas the human brain with all the context says, ‘This doesn’t seem right’ or ‘I think there’s more to this story’. There’s an intelligence and an advantage to being on the floor […] There is a value to the aggregation of people in a place to trade, it creates better markets.”

Sharing his own first-hand experience of crashes whilst working for the NYSE, Dolan recalls: “I’ll never forget it because I was across the road in our office, talking to our CEO and the market was down 300 points and by the time I walked across the street and got onto the floor, the market was down 800 points. That was about five minutes. So, what was interesting was that you weren’t quite sure what was happening, what was going on, what was causing this and over the next 15 minutes, the market dropped down to 1,200 points. 

“We reacted – we stood there as market makers and bought when nobody else wanted to buy, and kind of put ourselves in harm’s way to facilitate the market and help the stocks gravitate to a point where the public wanted to trade again.”

Read more: Lessons learned from Flash Boys

The overarching benefit therefore of this reactive component and demonstrably valuable aspect of open outcry – human oversight – is the tangible means of diversification. Speaking to The TRADE, Sylvain Thieullent, chief executive at Horizon Software, explains: “In terms of open outcry as a strategy, it would be counter-intuitive to see it come back full-steam to what it looked like back in the 80s for example, but for best execution it’s useful to have multiple tools and choices available and maybe then use the right one for a specific trade.

“For example, for what we call market sentiment, there is nothing better than open outcry to detect what the sentiment of the market is, so it does make sense that in some specific market conditions specifically the value is clear.”

This perspective on the value-add of live trading floors is in stark contrast with CME Group’s decision to completely shutter the open outcry practice across its exchanges back in 2021. 

The group confirmed on 5 May 2021 it would not re-open the open outcry trading pits following their closure in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, while contrastingly, Cboe opened a new trading floor in June 2022, having also closed due to COVID-19 related reasons in March 2020.

The exchange at the time highlighted client demand for additional floor-based traders as the driving factor behind the decision.

“COVID-19 required us to configure the trading floor to allow for six feet of separation between traders. Our previous floor couldn’t accommodate everyone on that basis.  So, on June 6 2022, when we opened our brand-new shiny state-of-the-art trading floor, it was really well received. It has a very attractive and efficient design which appeals to traders,” Montesano tells The TRADE. 

He added that based on what the company is seeing currently in terms of real data, the future looks bright in the space. Cboe’s proprietary product suite set several volume records in 2023, including SPX ADV of approximately 2,900,000 and VIX ADV of 743,000, with around 23% and 45% of those volumes taking place on the floor, respectively, The TRADE understands.

It was back in December 2022 that Cboe further expanded its floor having previously asserted that physical trading would remain open “as long as investors wanted them”. 

Montesano reaffirmed this to The TRADE: “Cboe will continue to operate a trading floor as long as our customers find utility in that, and in the hybrid market model we have. So far, that is the case. We do run a very robust trading floor, along with the fully electronic market, because our customers are telling us they still find tremendous utility in having the floor […] Our busiest open outcry pit is our S&P 500 options pit, the SPX pit and we now have more Market-Makers in that pit than we did prior to COVID-19.”

Market colour

Linked to the ability to account for anomalies through a physical, human presence, is the so-called ‘colour’ added by outcry trading and the ability to witness and perceive market sentiment first hand.

Dolan asserts that the tone and feeling of the floor was a key aspect: “I could tell when there were certain news items throughout my career down on the floor because there was a sense, a buzz in the air indicating it. For example, if the inflation number was a little bit lower and the market’s ripping upward because everybody thinks the Fed’s going to pause on interest rates, it’s a dynamic feeling.

“You could sense either the downside and the fear of what was going on in bad situations, or the euphoria on the upside when the floor got louder and busier. That was the fun part of the floor because you could sense that something was happening.”

Empirically, this equates to brokers providing this colour to their clients, informing customers in real-time what they are perceiving, and importantly, proactively looking out for these indicators.

As Montesano explains: “Another factor in going via the floor is that brokers can provide market colour and inform their customers in real-time what else they see going on in the pit. For example, they can make their customers aware of other large orders being executed in related or opposing series. That perceived colour is a value add. 

“We know of several brand-new firms, including some from overseas, and some that can quote electronically but also wanted a floor presence because they saw the vibrancy of it. In addition, some of the existing firms that have had a pit presence have expanded their presence. We’ve even had more brokerage groups come into the business as well.”

Read more: First ever female traders share experiences of the London trading floor

Elsewhere, speaking to the prevalence of open outcry in the US compared to Europe, there is a marked difference in approaches. While there remains today several open outcry exchanges on one side of the Atlantic, The London Metal Exchange (LME) is the last remaining in Europe. 

Thieullent suggests that it was a question of different recipes for different cultures: “[…] These days there is definitely a question around liquidity in Europe, where re-emergence of open outcry being a viable solution for more liquidity is more of a question. It’s a tool which has been lost in some ways in European culture, and there is a real challenge with regard to the number of liquidity pools and the overall liquidity of the market available which makes the potential slice for open outcry very small or very irregular.” 

However, on the other side of this is potential for evolution and enough space in the market to consider alternatives: “Obviously people agree that without e-trading, the market could have never survived the COVID-19 pandemic, if it was all physical trading. All that is absolutely true. But in the same breath, everyone was completely convinced that remote working was the future – completely – but then two years later we’re back and the office is once again valued. The winds have changed direction which is interesting,” says Thieullent.

Though electronic trading accounts – understandably and irrevocably – for the bulk of the market’s activity, this aspect of trading life, which does still prevail, is therefore perhaps not merely a nostalgic hark back as many are quick to declare. Rather, open outcry can justly be considered an extra, valuable, facet of an ever-moving and complex industry.

As Labovitz suggests: “Trading floors represent a different way of doing things, not worse, not an inferior way. A different way of doing it – there’s value in that.”

The post Open outcry: A renaissance? appeared first on The TRADE.

Miami International Holdings (MIH) – MIAX’s parent company – confirmed on Tuesday 17 October that a notice for its Form 1 application for its newest options exchange had been published by the regulator.

Once approved, the new options venue, named MIAX Sapphire, will commence electronic trading operations in the second quarter of 2024 followed by a physical trading floor that is set to be opened in Miami in the second half of the year, pending regulatory approval from the SEC.

MIAX Sapphire will utilise taker-maker pricing and a price-time allocation model, as well as leverage the existing MIAX Exchange technology to minimise additional technology efforts for existing members.

“Our new exchange will leverage our proprietary technology, and when combined with a live trading floor, will offer our members an optimised, efficient marketplace that can facilitate the trading of large, complex orders,” said Shelly Brown, executive vice president, strategic planning and business development of MIH.

“The opening of a trading floor in Miami advances our goal of creating innovative marketplaces with low-cost operating structures, which is further enhanced by Florida’s favourable personal and corporate income tax structure.”

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More than three quarters of surveyed prop trading firms confirmed said volatility trading strategies had out-performed other markets last year, according to a new report from Acuiti.

 Of the respondents, 35% labelled volatility “significantly better” than other strategies, while 33% reported a “slightly better” performance.

Around a third of surveyed firms which are not currently trading volatility products confirmed their intention to do so going forward. Furthermore, in terms of levels of interest from clients, 44% of FCMs reported an increase since 2020.

Acuiti’s research – commissioned by MIAX – included responses from senior executives across 94 proprietary trading firms, hedge funds, banks and interdealer brokers, as well as the main futures commission merchants (FCM) that serve the derivatives market. 

The report confirmed that volatility trading is gearing up for significant growth, with the sector “moving from a niche asset class to a core strategy for many firms seeking to diversify their strategies”.

Firms are looking to capitalise on the increasingly occurring spikes in volatility, said Acuiti. Ross Lancaster, head of research, addressed innovation in the space, highlighting that there is significant opportunity. He said: “Different products with different methodologies will enable firms to trade across different measures of volatility expanding the strategies used and creating basis and arbitrage trading opportunities.

“In addition, different types of market participant will find different use cases for the various methodologies, growing the overall ecosystem for volatility trading.”

In terms of optimising liquidity and where traders are looking to trade volatility, the report found that “volume and open interest” was one of the principal considerations when selecting, along with “exchange and clearing fees”, which was cited by the majority of respondents.

Additionally, “incentives offered by exchanges” was highlighted as a crucial factor when trading a new contract for more than half of proprietary trading firms, while hedge funds highlighted both “volume and open interest” and “methodology of index calculation”.

Kaitlin Meyer, vice president of marketing and sales at MIAX, confirmed that demand remains strong for volatility products across futures, options and ETFs and added that “market participants [continue] to look for ways to manage their risk and hedge portfolios even during times of low volatility.”

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Best Challenger Exchange is a new category for Leaders in Trading this year, in which we recognise not only the ever-changing facets of the marketplace but also the plethora of new venues springing up to accommodate them.

Unsurprisingly, given the themes of 2022, digital assets did a lot of the heavy lifting in this year’s shortlist – but it’s not all about crypto, with US-based players such as MEMX driving themes of equality and investor power, while IEX is of course well-known for its stance on high frequency trading. Our shortlist this year includes Archax, FTX, Investors Exchange (IEX), Members Exchange (MEMX) and Miami International Securities Exchange (MIAX).

Archax 

A new institutional-grade exchange for trading crypto/digital assets founded in 2018, Archax is the first crypto firm to be regulated by the FCA. With a majority stake acquired by abrdn in August 2022, the trading venue is clawing its way into institutional inner circles, most recently through its new partnership with METACO to deploy its digital asset custody and orchestration technology on IBM Cloud, in order to leverage the confidential computing capabilities of IBM’s digital asset infrastructure.  

A digital asset exchange, brokerage and custodian based in London, Archax has big ambitions. “We see the digital asset market as a long-term investment opportunity, and at Archax we make investments in technology and processes to reflect that vision,” says CEO and co-founder Graham Rodford.  

But it is also expanding outwards from pure crypto trading into the wider world of what blockchain can offer. In September, the firm partnered with BondEvalue to deliver solutions for the trading of fractional fixed income products. The partnership will enable their clients to access investment opportunities on BondEvalue’s regulated platform, the BondbloX Bond Exchange (BBX), a blockchain-based bond exchange which allows investors to conduct electronic trading of fractional bonds. 

As a bridge between the traditional and DLT space, Archax is proving a worthy contender.  

FTX  

A cryptocurrency exchange built “by traders, for traders,” FTX Trading offers products including derivatives, options, volatility products and leveraged tokens. With a senior team comprising alumnis from Jane Street, Optiver, Susquehanna, Facebook and Google, among others, the exchange seeks to service everyone from both professional firms to first-time investors, with a platform that is both simple and sophisticated.  

At the start of 2022, FTX Trading won a further $400 million in Series C funding, taking its total valuation to $32 billion – not bad for a firm only founded in May 2019, with investors including Singapore’s Temasek and Paradigm. In March of this year, the exchange expanded its presence into Europe and the Middle East with the establishment of FTX Europe, marking the next phase of its global expansion. Headquartered in Switzerland with an additional regional headquarter in Cyprus, the new company offers its products and services to European clients via a licensed investment firm with passportable licenses across the European economic area. 

In the same month, the firm partnered with US-based crypto platform West Realm Shires Services to launch a new unit targeted at institutional investors – marking its commitment towards developing and supporting institutional involvement in crypto trading. FTX Access will initially provide institutional investors interested in gaining exposure to digital assets with trade execution, analytics, index products, advisory services  and capital introductions, with plans to expand into custody, derivatives, structured products and other asset management products later down the line. 

“Our goal is to provide services that make it easier for traders at all levels to invest in cryptocurrencies, while also meeting compliance and regulatory standards found in traditional finance,” said FTX CEO and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, speaking at the time.  

FTX also this year made a strategic investment into IEX Group, the operator of the US-based Investors’ Exchange, in order to develop a transparent market structure for the buying, selling and trading of digital asset securities.  The question of crypto regulation has long been a tricky one, and FTX US has been clear about its ambitions to become a regulated exchange, working with regulators to create a platform that enables both retail and institutional engagement with digital assets.   

Investor’s Exchange (IEX) 

A controversial name on the exchange landscape, IEX has created some waves in recent years, but there is no question of its influence. Founded in 2012 with the intention of mitigating the impact of high frequency trading, and listing in 2017, the exchange is familiar to many as the brainchild of ex-RBC traders Brad Katsuyama and Ronan Ryan, who came to believe that that traditional stock exchanges were enabling certain trading strategies that could harm long-term investors such as mutual funds and pension funds. Debuting as a dark pool in 2013 and the subject of Michael Lewis’ notorious book Flash Boys, the exchange has since built a name for itself through its mission to give all market participants a fair and efficient trading experience.  

It has developed a number of innovations including the IEX Speed Bump, designed to ensure that the exchange executes trades at the most up-to-date price, and the IEX Signal (i.e., Crumbling Quote Indicator or CQI), a machine learning-based signal that aims to protect investors from trading while prices are unstable. Since its inception, more than $8.5 trillion in shares traded on IEX Exchange have benefited from the IEX Signal. 

Members Exchange (MEMX) 

Claiming to be the fastest-growing US equities exchange, MEMX was founded by its own members to serve as a co-operative, collective exchange acting in the interests of its founders and their client base. Its founding members include many of the largest US retail broker-dealers, global banks, financial services firms and global market makers, such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, E*TRADE, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, TD Ameritrade, UBS and Virtu Financial. The exchange’s mission is to “increase competition, improve operational transparency, reduce fixed costs, and simplify the execution of equity trading,” and it has grown rapidly since its launch in 2020, currently accounting for around 5% of equity market share.  

Its big development this year was the launch of its US options exchange, and in August the SEC issued approval for it to trade listed options. “MEMX Options will use technological advancements to increase determinism, reduce costs and drive competitive improvements for our options members, just as we did in equities,” said Jonathan Kellner, chief executive of MEMX.  

“As the only exchange founded to represent the needs of market participants, expanding into a new asset class allows us to provide meaningful benefits to an even broader range of investors.” 

Miami International Securities Exchange (MIAX) 

MIAX operates regulated financial marketplaces across multiple asset classes and geographies. The MIAX Exchange marketplaces are enabled by in-house built, proprietary technology that was originally built to meet the high-performance quoting demands of the US options trading industry. 

The group operates markets across a number of asset classes including options, futures and cash equities: including options through MIAX Options, MIAX Pearl, and MIAX Emerald; US equities through MIAX Pearl Equities; US futures and options on futures through the Minneapolis Grain Exchange; and international listings through The Bermuda Stock Exchange. Through MGEX Clearing, it also offers clearing services for US futures and options on futures. The group recently acquired Dorman Trading, a full-service Futures Commission Merchant registered with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Its total US multi-listed options market share reached a record 14.3% in 2021, a 21% increase from its 11.8% market share in 2020. Total US multi-listed options market share for the MIAX Exchange Group reached 11.63% in the first nine months of 2022, representing a 19.8% year-over-year decrease. A total of 97.3 million multi-listed options contracts were executed on the MIAX Exchange Group, representing an average daily volume of 4,635,039 contracts. Total year-to-date (YTD) volume reached 961.2 million contracts, a decrease of 2.8% from the same period in 2021.

In US equities, MIAX Pearl Equities reported volume of 2.8 billion shares in September 2022, representing a 101.8% increase YoY and a record monthly market share of 1.16%. Total YTD volume reached a record 22.4 billion shares, a 268.1% increase from the same period in 2021. Since launching its first options exchange in 2012, MIAX has grown to be the 15th largest global derivatives exchange operator as of 30 June 2022, as measured by the total number of futures and options contracts traded on exchanges as reported by the Futures Industry Association.

Since 2017, MIAX has been involved in ongoing litigation with Nasdaq, surrounding six claims of patent infringement. As of June 2022, these claims were invalidated by the US District Court and and Nasdaq waived its right to appeal, thus closing the case. 

The winner of Best Challenger Exchange will be announced at the Leaders in Trading 2022 gala awards dinner at The Savoy Hotel on 3 November. For table enquiries, please contact Nathan Anacleto.  

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Matt McFarland joins MIAX as vice president after spending the last 13 years at rival US exchange Cboe Global Markets, most recently as vice president and head of futures for the last two years.

He initially joined Cboe in 2007 as a director of business development, going on to become head of London derivatives business development for the exchange and then senior director and head of CFE strategy and business operations until his most recent role.

He joins MIAX Futures as vice president of derivatives products and business development where he will be responsible for product development, marketing and business development for derivatives.

Alongside McFarland, MIAX Futures has appointed Thomas Jarck, as vice president of proprietary product development.

Jarck began his career at Letco as a senior options trader in 1992. He has since gone on to hold equity derivatives trading roles at major institutions including Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Nomura, CIBC World Markets, and a US index volatility trading role at Societe Generale.

In his new role, he will be responsible for propriety product development, marketing and education, focusing primarily on volatility products.

“Tom and Matt are two key hires for us and their industry experience makes them excellent additions to the MIAX Futures team at a pivotal time in MIH’s history,” said Thomas P. Gallagher, chairman and chief executive officer of MIH.

“They will provide considerable support and resources to our futures and proprietary product development efforts, including assisting with the launch of derivative products on the SPIKES Volatility Index, and other products such as BRIXX Commercial Real Estate (CRE) Indexes and Corporate Tax Futures.”

MIAX officially launched on 25 September last year, backed by several institutions as a contender for incumbent US exchange operators, Nasdaq, Cboe, and NYSE.

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The market data provider is now offering top-of-book and full-depth-of-book data feeds for each exchange including MEMOIR Depth, TOP, and NLS for MEMX, and MIAX PEARL Equities DoM and ToM for MIAX. 

It is directly collocated with each exchange in their primary data centre, NY4, as well as in their respective backup data centres for redundancy and error correction. 

“MayStreet has long been committed to providing the highest-quality data feeds possible across a wide range of asset classes globally,” said MayStreet CTO and co-founder, Michael Lehr. “With the launch next week of two new high-profile US equity exchanges, we’re pleased to be ready for Day One at each and help our clients ensure that they are meeting their Best Execution obligations.”

New exchange groups MEMX and MIAX are due to launch on 21 September and 25 September respectively. Both trading venues are backed by major financial institutions and are set to challenge incumbent US exchange operators, Nasdaq, Cboe, and NYSE.

In July, MayStreet expanded its US cash treasury data portfolio with the addition of Fenics US treasuries data feed. The expansion added BGC-owned Fenics USTreasuries (Fenics UST) electronic US government securities trading platform to the already existing list of feeds that includes CME’s BrokerTec and Nasdaq fixed income platforms.

Just prior to that, the market data specialist raised $21 million in a recent funding round, which was led by Credit Suisse Asset Management’s NEXT Investors. MayStreet was founded in 2012 as a platform to help firms manage increasingly complex data requirements.  

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