The American Stock Exchange has filed plans for implementing a new hybrid trading structure, which combines electronic and floor-based trading, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Amex says the hybrid market structure offers market participants automated execution combined with the dedicated liquidity provision of an auction market for times of order imbalances, complex trades, or when natural liquidity cannot be found.
The hybrid market structure will be supported by Amex's new state-of-the-art trading system, called AEMI - the Auction and Electronic Market Integration platform - which has been in development since April 2004 and will be rolled out with the implementation of Regulation NMS in June 2006.
Initially servicing equities and exchange traded funds (ETF) listings, AEMI will also be integrated with Amex's options trading platform, ANTE. The exchange says the new platform will eventually support all of the products currently offered by Amex - equities, ETFs, options and bonds - and provide sub-second execution, scalable capacity and fault-tolerant redundancy.
Says Neal Wolkoff, chairman and CEO, Amex: "We are anticipating great advances to our equity and exchange traded fund markets with the development of the AEMI system and we fully expect to qualify as an automated trading system under Regulation NMS."
Amex's move follows plans by the New York Stock Exchange to merge with electronic exchange Archipelago and create a hybrid market that will lessen its dependence on traditional "open outcry" trading.