PCX Plus launched with a single issue, Cerner Corp. (CERN/CQN). Julian Maneein of Knight Financial Products, LLC is the Lead Market Maker in Cerner options. Two competing market makers in the crowd are providing supplemental quotes in Cerner through PCX Plus. The PCX plans to add issues and LMMs to PCX Plus over the next several months.
"We are following a very deliberate roll-out schedule," said Jon Werts, Vice President, New Product and Business Development. "In the early days, our primary interest is system stability, making sure that PCX Plus performs as designed and programmed. It has been thoroughly tested. We have held multiple mock trading sessions with floor members and staff. We have every confidence that PCX Plus will deliver on its promise. But we're going to be very careful. We want to see it walk before we turn it loose to run."
PCX Plus is both a new technology platform and a new market structure for the PCX, designed to better serve existing market participants and attract additional liquidity to the Exchange. It will support the Exchange's San Francisco options floor, augmenting the existing electronic trading system, POETS. It will create a unique marketplace, providing firms and traders the ability to make markets from the floor or remote locations. Order flow firms' connections to the PCX will remain as they are, however, their customers will benefit from deeper markets created by the addition of liquidity from multiple competing market makers on and off the floor.
