Boston Options Exchange
From MarketsWiki
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| Boston Options Exchange | |
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| Founded | Feb. 6, 2004 |
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| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois; Boston, Massachusetts |
| Key People | Tony McCormick, CEO |
| Products | options products |
| Web site | www.bostonoptions.com/ |
The Boston Options Exchange (BOX) was launched on Feb. 6, 2004 [1] by Boston Stock Exchange, Inc. (BSE), Montreal Exchange and Interactive Brokers Group LLC, as an all-electronic equity derivatives market and an alternative to the existing market models. BOX was the first options market to offer the possibility of price improvement to investors via an electronic auction process known as the "PIP."
The Boston Options Exchange was ranked as the world's 17th-largest derivatives exchange by volume in 2009, down 22.9 percent on 2008's volume figure, according to the Futures Industry Association's latest volume rankings for 2009.[2] The FIA report, published in early April 2010, notes that the BOX's total volume in 2009 reached 137.78 million compared to 178.65 million in 2008.
Key People
Tony McCormick was officially announced the CEO of BOX on Oct. 13, 2009.[3] He replaced Will Easley, a founder and vice chairman, who became acting CEO of BOX on June 13, 2008, when Scott Morris resigned as CEO.[4]
Background
BOX applied to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for exchange status. BOX had been operating as a unit of the Boston Stock Exchange, which agreed in 2007 to be acquired by Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. Under the terms of the deal, Nasdaq would be responsible for regulating BOX, which handles about 4.8 percent of U.S. equity options trading. Nasdaq is a direct competitor to BOX, so to avoid being regulated by a competitor, BOX applied for status as a separate exchange.[5]
In July 2006, the Boston Options Exchange completed migration to its new trading engine platform, SOLA, which is licensed from the Montreal Exchange. BOX has no designated specialists; competing market makers are responsible for ensuring liquidity. BOX uses a maker-taker model for most penny classes, in which the exchange pays a rebate to suppliers of liquidity and charges liquidity takers a fee.[6] BOX uses a price/time order matching algorithm. Traders can connect with BOX through a number of ISVs that offer front-end applications for BOX participants.[7]
BOX provides two types of gateways to its trading engine [8]: a) bi-directional order and quote related gateways and b) outbound feed of market data from the BOX trading engine to the user. BOX provides a FIX interface which allows BOX participants, who are already using the FIX protocol for order routing and management to other options markets, to connect to the BOX trading engine with a minimum of effort. The FIX interface provides a subset of the BOX trading engine functions and is therefore better suited to the "non-market maker" category of participants.[9]
On Aug. 29, 2008 the Montreal Exchange (MX), a founding partner and the technical operator of BOX, increased its ownership position to the maximum 53.2 percent from its previous 31.4 percent. The MX acquired a 21.9 percent ownership position from another senior BOX partner, the Boston Stock Exchange, Inc., as agreed in December of 2007.[10]
In May of 2010, BOX switched the location of its matching engine and revamped its underlying architecture as an additional enticement to the high frequency trading crowd. On May 10 of that year, BOX moved its matching engine into the Equinix NY4 data center in Secaucus, N.J. That was home to the International Securities Exchange's matching engine as well as a number of high-frequency players. Proximity to the BOX's matching engine was intended to reduce turnaround time for high-frequency traders.[11]
Products
As of May 12, 2008, BOX listed nearly 1500 classes for trading.
PIP
A key feature of the BOX market is the Price Improvement Period (PIP) auction, an automated trading mechanism (patent pending) which permits brokers to seek to improve executable client orders. BOX Participants executing agency orders as order flow providers (OFPs) and wishing to improve the client's price by taking the other side as principal signal this intent to the BOX market-place via a special order message submitted to the BOX trading engine; market makers on the class as well as other BOX trading participants can then compete for this order by bettering the price. At the end of a very short period, the client side of the trade is matched with the best prices available.[12]
2008 Volume
Total average daily trading volume in 2008 at BOX totaled 706,000 contracts versus 517,000 in 2007. BOX led all exchanges in market share for the SPY on five days in December, during which time market share averaged 30.1 percent. In 2008, BOX saved investors in excess of $70 million via its price improvement period (PIP) and set an all-time high of $6.46 improvement per contract during the month of October. Total savings to investors since the 2004 launch of the innovative PIP now exceeds $236,000,000.[13]
2007 Volume
Total average daily trading volume year to date at BOX totaled 517,000 contracts versus 376,000 in 2006. The highest single-day recorded was on Nov. 8, 2007, when 1.23 million contracts changed hands, and the most active month was November when average daily volume reached 750,000 contracts.[14]
References
- ↑ BOX Celebrates Five-Year Anniversary. Boston Options Exchange. Retrieved on February 6, 2009.
- ↑ 2009 Annual Volume Survey. FIA magazine. Retrieved on April 8, 2010.
- ↑ Press Release. Boston Options Exchange. Retrieved on October 13, 2009.
- ↑ Management Change At BOX. Boston Options Exchange. Retrieved on June 13, 2008.
- ↑ "Boston Options Market Will Seek Official SEC Exchange Status". Bloomberg. Retrieved on May 2, 2008.
- ↑ Options Maker-Taker Markets Gain Steam. Traders Magazine. Retrieved on April 30, 2008.
- ↑ ISVs That Connect to BOX. Boston Options Exchange. Retrieved on August 4, 2009.
- ↑ Fast Technology Drives BOX's Quick Growth. Securities Industry News. Retrieved on May 18, 2009.
- ↑ Trading at BOX. BOX. Retrieved on May 4, 2009.
- ↑ "Montreal Exchange Completes Acquisition of Majority Ownership Interest in Boston Options Exchange". Montreal Exchange. Retrieved on August 29, 2008.
- ↑ BOX Courts High-Frequency Traders. Traders Magazine. Retrieved on May 28, 2010.
- ↑ "BOX Achieves Record Market Gains in 2008”. BOX. Retrieved on January 5, 2009.
- ↑ "Price Improvement - BOX Website”. BOX. Retrieved on August 4, 2009.
- ↑ "BOX Sets Records in 2007 While Innovation Continues; Best Month and Best Day Since Inception for Volume”. BOX. Retrieved on January 9, 2008.
