Source: Bats
Bats Global Markets, a leading operator of securities markets in the U.S. and Europe, received approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its Retail Price Improvement (RPI) program, designed to provide significant price improvement for retail investors.
BATS BYX Exchange will launch the program as a one-year pilot on December 17, 2012.
"Our RPI program is designed to provide better executions for individual investors by offering material price improvement for retail orders," said Joe Ratterman, president and chief executive of BATS Global Markets. "By enhancing price competition for retail orders, our goal is to provide retail customers with better execution prices while improving the overall quality of the BYX Exchange for all market participants."
BATS has a history of providing significant price improvement to all types of customers. In the third quarter of 2012 alone, firms trading on the BATS U.S. stock exchanges realized more than $19 million in unexpected price improvement from executions against midpoint orders priced better than the National Best Bid or Offer (NBBO).
The planned BATS RPI program is designed to provide material price improvement for retail orders sent to the BYX Exchange by executing incoming retail orders against retail price improving orders and all other liquidity that improves upon the NBBO. The program uses a strict price/time priority model and executes retail orders at multiple price levels to achieve maximum price improvement for retail orders.
The RPI program creates a new class of market participants called Retail Member Organizations (RMOs) that are eligible to submit retail orders. Any BYX Exchange Member may certify to submit RPI orders that offer price improvement in $.001 increments to retail orders submitted by RMOs.
To qualify as an RMO, members must conduct a retail business or handle retail orders on behalf of another broker-dealer. At launch, RPI orders will be accepted for a select set of securities defined in the RPI fee schedule, and gradually expanded to all securities traded on BYX over the course of the one-year pilot. The BATS RPI program rule filing and guidelines for applying to become an RMO on the BYX Exchange are available at www.batstrading.com and BYX RPI rule filing.
Retail orders and RPI orders may only be entered by BYX Exchange members that have completed the appropriate certification with the BATS Trade Desk.