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NYSE Amex options today announced that on Monday, July 12 it will add five new firms to its e-Specialist program that initially began in February 2010. As new e-Specialists in approximately 650 option classes, Timber Hill, Integral Derivatives, Wolverine Trading, Morgan Stanley and Susquehanna Securities will be subject to NYSE Amex options market making conditions and heightened quoting requirements. e-Specialists are off-floor market makers that function alongside traditional Specialists and Market Makers within the exchange’s state-of-the-art hybrid trading platform to provide liquidity across more than 240,000 options series based on 1,932 underlying securities.
“The launch and expansion of the e-Specialist program is another innovative way that NYSE Amex options is working with its order flow providers, customers and market participants to create a uniquely competitive market model,” said Steve Crutchfield , CEO, NYSE Amex. “We are proud to welcome Timber Hill, Integral Derivatives, Wolverine, Morgan Stanley and Susquehanna Securities to the e-Specialist program. This benefits our customers and the broader market by increasing liquidity, enhancing efficiency and creating a diverse, highly-active trading environment for all our customers.”
These firms join the five existing e-Specialist firms of Citadel Securities, Goldman Sachs, UBS Securities, Citigroup Derivatives Markets, and Barclays Capital. NYSE Amex options provides customers with a distinct, customer-driven hybrid marketplace that offers exceptional technology combined with a proven open-outcry trading environment. As one of two competing U.S. options exchanges operated by NYSE Euronext, it provides customers with a valuable platform to trade options with reliability, transparency and efficiency. NYSE Euronext's U.S. options exchanges, NYSE Arca and NYSE Amex options utilize industry leading open outcry trading facilities with an advanced electronic trading platform capable of processing 400,000 orders and 3,500,000 quotes per second with 2 millisecond acknowledgment (ACK) times.
