Direct Edge has come out with an audio-visual guide to its order types.
At a time when both trading executives and regulatory officials are concerned that a surplus of exchange order types is making the stock market unduly complex, Direct Edge is trying to add some clarity to the discussion.
“We’ve been saying for some time that exchanges need to do a better job of explaining how current market structure operates, and how it is working to lower investor costs and improve execution quality,” said William O’Brien, Direct Edge’s chief executive officer. “This effort is the result of a lot of hard work over many months to explain our how exchanges function in a detailed way, yet still easy to understand, so that it can be useful to a wide variety of market participants.”
The guide is in the form of a slide show with a professional voiceover. It is accessible on the website of Brainshark, an outfit that creates presentations for sales and marketing and training executives.
For many, the concern over exchange order types is that there are far too many. Direct Edge says it has only 10: stop, reserve, pegged, route peg, midpoint peg, midpoint match, discretionary, midpoint discretionary, intermarket sweep, and hidden orders.
Direct Edge has always had information on its website about how its order types work, according to a spokesperson, but “this is our first ‘Direct Edge Order Type Guide’ which has detailed explanations, animated examples and videos to illustrate functionality.”
