The New York Stock Exchange today received approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin full implementation of its Hybrid Market initiative.
Designed to offer customers greater choice in order-execution services, the NYSE Hybrid Market expands customer ability to trade instantaneously with certainty and anonymity without sacrificing the price improvement and market quality of the floor-based NYSE auction market.
"We welcome the SEC's approval of the Hybrid Market and the opportunity to move into the next phase of development," said NYSE Group Chief Executive Officer John Thain. "The Hybrid Market will increase efficiencies by marrying the best of electronic trading and the auction market. We will better accommodate our customers' diverse trading strategies by giving them new choices in order execution to access our superior prices and market liquidity. Greater choice in our marketplace benefits all customers, from the smallest investors to the largest institutions."
Maintaining the Exchange's ability for price improvement across all its order-execution options, the NYSE Hybrid Market will provide customers with choices that include sub-second automated, anonymous transactions for NYSE-listed stocks or the opportunity to have orders represented in the auction market with the benefits of human judgment and accountability at the central point of sale.
This SEC approval allows the Exchange to advance the Hybrid Market implementation program, which currently includes 154 listed companies and incorporates advanced trading technology for floor brokers and specialists, to all member firms representing customer orders in all NYSE-listed stocks. Phase I, which began on Dec. 15, 2005, successfully integrated features such as e-Quotes, c-Quotes, s-Quotes, g-Quotes, reserves and layering of quotes among other functionality. Phase II will follow shortly after full implementation of Phase I with exact implementation timeframes announced separately.
The Exchange is actively engaged in working with customers and the trading floor community to continue to further refine the Hybrid Market platform and develop new features that further augment brokers and specialists' ability to add value and improve market quality in the NYSE marketplace.