Since its launch in December 2001, the Primex Auction System has executed more than 900 million shares.
"We have experienced continued and steady growth in usage," said Dean Furbush, executive vice president of Nasdaq Transaction Services. "Primex recently set a record for daily trading volume of more than 13 million shares."
In conjunction with expanding the list of eligible securities, Nasdaq will upgrade the capacity of the Primex Auction System to process 1,000 messages per second.
"This system enhancement will further assure participants that they can expect sub-second execution times in the Primex Auction System, even at peak volumes," said Furbush.
The Primex Auction™ was engineered to provide Nasdaq market participants with a centralized, market-driven price improvement and liquidity facility. All Nasdaq participants that subscribe to Primex have an opportunity to access orders flowing though the system, which will provide many of these orders with exposure to a wider marketplace. All executions in the system occur at prices within the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO).
The Primex Auction System will be linked to SuperMontage, Nasdaq's new trading platform to be introduced later this month. Any Nasdaq participant can use Primex in tandem with SuperMontage to seek seamless price improvement opportunities for their marketable orders, while still getting the full benefit of SuperMontage.
In general, Nasdaq charges no fee to firms that enter orders seeking price improvement within Primex. Market making firms that expose their customer orders in Primex have the ability to commit their own capital to those orders, thus instantly guaranteeing an execution within the NBBO.
More than 2,000 securities will be added to the Primex Auction System's list of eligible securities, which already numbers more than 1,400 securities. Included are all components of the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the top 1,000 Nasdaq securities based on market capitalization, and three popular Exchange Traded Funds.
Traders can view the list of securities currently eligible to trade in the Primex Auction System at the following link www.primextrading.com/essentials/lookup/
More than 60 broker/dealers have registered as Primex Auction System participants. Some of these firms access the system directly, while others use connections established by some of the industry's biggest order-routing and trade-management software vendors.
The Primex Auction is the creation of Primex Trading N.A., LLC, a partnership formed by securities industry brokerage firms and investment banks including Merrill Lynch, Salomon Smith Barney, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. New York-based Primex Trading N.A., LLC conceives, designs, and licenses trading solutions for the securities industry. For more information go to www.primextrading.com , or contact Glen Shipway at glen.shipway@primextrading.com
Nasdaq is the world's largest stock market. With more than 4,000 companies, Nasdaq lists more companies and trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. Over the past five years, Nasdaq has outpaced all other U.S. markets in listing IPOs. It is also home to category defining companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, transportation, media and healthcare industries. With operations on three continents, Nasdaq is a key driver of global capital formation. For more information about Nasdaq, visit the Nasdaq Web site at www.nasdaq.com or the Nasdaq NewsroomSM at www.nasdaqnews.com.
