Bats Global Markets, an innovative global financial markets technology company, today announced it officially filed rules with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a US equity options trading platform in early 2010 (announced separately July 8, 2009).
"We reached an important milestone with formal filing of our options rule set as we continue to make great progress toward a BATS Options go live early next year," said Joe Ratterman, chief executive of BATS Global Markets and BATS Exchange. "The options markets are at a transformative stage and we intend to be a clear and loud voice in the current debate on topics like penny pricing, payment for order flow and step up auctions.
"As with the US equities market four years ago, we are launching an options market with the same goal -- to Make Markets Better by leading the way with great technology and simple, transparent pricing. We thank our investors, customers and technology partners for their continued support," he said.
The BATS Options rule set filed with the SEC is available at batstrading.com.
BATS plans to make its options platform certification system available in December to BATS Exchange members for connectivity and testing.
The company also recently filed rules with the SEC for its second U.S. equities exchange (BYX) (announced on September 17, 2009), also slated for launch in early 2010.