AES Options allows traders to simultaneously access liquidity at all six U.S. options exchanges, with strategies designed to provide price improvement, while mitigating the adverse affects of market impact. Additional strategies let traders link options to the price of the underlying equity and retain anonymity while putting on a position.

Structural and regulatory changes, combined with hedge fund and institutional capital flows into strategies that utilize exchange-traded options, are driving unprecedented levels of volume growth in the U.S. equity options marketplace. As options volume continues to migrate to electronic exchanges, the demand is increasing exponentially for algos that can rapidly access liquidity and lower execution costs.

The Options AES offerings are integrated with the existing AES product suite available through RealTick, which includes Credit Suisse's award-winning equity algos and direct access to their CrossFinder dark pool, one of the world's largest.

"With this integration, clients now have the ability to direct trades to Credit Suisse across equities and equity options using the same RealTick front end," comments Michel Finzi, Managing Director, Sales and Marketing for Townsend Analytics. "These leading edge offerings can help our institutional clients reduce market impact, improve performance versus benchmarks, and add consistency to their trading process -- all using RealTick," Finzi adds.

"Traders seek a single technology platform that can seamlessly offer multi-asset class capabilities, and strategically this is what has helped make RealTick a premier technology provider," affirms Brent Kochuba, Head of Credit Suisse AES Options Sales. "Clients have high expectations of their trading partners and we rely on relationships like this to combine robust technology with excellent customer service."