Turquoise Announces Lit Auctions

Traders Magazine Online News, October 3, 2017

John D'Antona Jr

Turquoise, a European MTF, announced that it plans to launch frequent transparent auctions to complement its existing lit and non-displayed trading mechanisms. Turquoise Lit Auctions, as they have been dubbed, will be a pre-trade transparent, MiFID II compliant, matching mechanism providing indicative price and quantity to the market. The auction mechanism has already obtained regulatory approval for Q4 2017 launch, ahead of MiFID II implementation in January 2018.

Robert Barnes, CEO of Turquoise, said: “Turquoise is proud of its track record of innovating in partnership with our customers. As firms seek MiFID II compliance, Turquoise Lit Auctions™ is another example of an easy to implement solution offering quality execution in a regulated market environment.”

Turquoise Lit Auctions will be triggered when Turquoise receives matching orders from its members. Members will then have a 50 millisecond window in which to submit any further orders to the auction before a further 50 millisecond randomized uncrossing period commences. Auction matching will happen within Primary Best Bid Offer (“PBBO”) Reference Price Collar and will support orders pegged to the PBBO midpoint and Limit Orders. Turquoise members will be able to participate in Turquoise Lit Auctions™ by using their existing technical interface to Turquoise and workflow into the new mechanism with Market Identifier Code (“MIC”) of TRQA.

The introduction of Turquoise Lit Auctions follows the success of Turquoise Plato Uncross, the non-displayed service that provides a series of periodic randomized auction-like uncrossings during European trading hours.

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