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AX Trading announced today that it had surpassed the 10 million share mark in trading volume. According to Bloomberg trade advertising service, as of November 30, over 10.3 million shares have traded on The AX Trading Network.
“Leading institutional traders continue to discover The AX as unique venue for trading larger orders in more thinly-traded stocks,” said AX CEO Kevin Callahan. “It is our early and loyal members who have helped us reach this important milestone.”
The AX Trading Network (“The AX”) is the new electronic trading community where professional traders can connect and trade in a whole new way -- a trader-initiated auction. “Initiators” of AX auctions can decide how much information to share about the auction - if any -- and what counterparties to invite. AX is approved to trade all U.S. stocks.
Since launch, AX members have initiated over 2,600 unique auctions, representing over 221M shares of real, actionable liquidity. The average AX print is over 46,000 shares and the average market cap of stocks put up for auction on The AX is close to $2 Billion.
The AX is different from other crossing systems in three important ways.
One, The AX allows one trader to proactively solicit other traders to trade but in a way that still protects their trading intentions. In a traditional crossing model, both buyer and seller must be actively exposing their orders to the dark pool at the same time at same price.
Two, The AX performs true price and size discovery because the auction matches the orders at the price that maximizes the size of the trade, whether at, inside or outside the market spread. Traditional crossing systems typically match trades at the midpoint of the spread.
Three, The AX is built on a “network” model where one trader can invite certain types of counterparties to participate in the auction. Traditional crossing systems operate on more of a central “pool” model where there is typically little control over the counterparties they interact with.
“In a difficult trading environment, liquidity sourcing has become more difficult and time consuming for all traders,” said Peter Jenkins, President. “The AX is all about making the liquidity searching process more efficient and more secure for all market participants.”
