Electronic trading and brokerage giant Instinet has launched a dark liquidity pool for US listed options.
Instinet Options CBX lets traders arrange to buy and sell on a private, electronic network away from the eight US options exchanges, although the transaction has to be completed on one of these.
The firm says its platform has launched with an established base of liquidity and, unlike other options dark pools, is targeted to clients trading all order sizes rather than those just looking to trade large blocks.
It is currently available through direct FIX connectivity, as a destination in the firm's front-end trading systems and through its liquidity seeking algorithms and smart order router. It will soon also be available via third party providers.
Jonathan Kellner, president, Americas, Instinet, says: "We leveraged our flexible, multi-asset technology platform to bring a completely dark liquidity pool to listed options at an early stage of the market's electronic evolution. Because of our continued success in integrating options trading functionality into other components of our product suite, we felt the time was right to extend our crossing infrastructure to offer an options liquidity pool."
The dark pool is the latest step in Instinet's plan to boost its presence in the fast-growing US options market following the acquisition last year of derivatives trading technology vendor Torc Financial.