Knight Capital Group (NYSE Euronext: KCG) today announced the introduction of Knight Match Europe, a non-displayed liquidity venue for the trading of European equities.
Knight Match provides a unique pool of liquidity to the European marketplace, bringing together retail, institutional, algorithmic and principal order flow.
Knight Match is a broker crossing system that provides anonymous access and trade execution opportunities to seek price improvement. Knight Match Europe's differentiating feature is the presence of retail order flow, both resting and marketable, within the pool. The combination of orders originating from institutional desks and buy-side algorithms as well as from Knight's retail broker-dealer clients and Knight Link Europe's market-making flow provides increased fulfilment opportunities. Orders are executed according to a price/equal split protocol, providing a level playing field by fulfilling at the best price equally split among all matching orders, rather than simply fulfilling on a first-come, first-serve basis. Another distinguishing factor of Knight Match Europe is the various order types accepted in the venue: Limit Orders (LMT), Immediate-or-Cancel (IOC), Peg Orders (Mid- and Near-Touch).
Knight Match Europe is based on the highly successful model Knight developed for trading in the U.S. equity markets. Knight Match uses the same technology standards that support Knight's high volume, low latency trading infrastructure. Knight can accommodate a wide range of trading architectures and capacity requirements based on our leading technology, extensive market-making operation, and direct memberships of more than 20 European exchanges and multilateral trading facilities (MTFs).
Clients can access Knight Match Europe through the following: Knight Direct execution management system, Knight's full suite of algorithms, FIX 4.2, Bloomberg, FidessaNet, ULNet, Thompson Reuters, TradeWeb, Trading Screen and any FIX-compliant EMS/OMS.
The introduction of Knight Match Europe follows the successful November 2009 launch of Knight Link Europe and continues the company's efforts to provide alternative liquidity products and enhance its capabilities in pan-European equities.