The TRADE 60 | Page 12

NEWS UPDATE EQUITIES Cboe looks to add speed bump to equities exchange LP² four millisecond delay mechanism will be applied to the Cboe EDGA exchange to protect market makers from high-frequency traders. C boe Global Markets has submitted an application to US authorities to implement a ‘speed bump’ on its equities exchange. Cboe confirmed in a statement that it plans to intro- duce a Liquidity Provider Protection feature, known as LP², on its EDGA exchange in a bid to improve liquidity and to allow market makers to take more risk and quote tighter spreads with greater size. Under the exchange’s proposal, which is open to industry feedback, liquidity-taking orders sent to EDGA will have to wait four milliseconds before trading with resting orders in the order book. Cboe said that this will provide market makers with sufficient time to re-price their resting orders before ‘opportunistic’, or high-frequency traders (HFTs), can trade with them at old prices. “Our proposed LP² initiative is the result of vital and ongoing consultation with customers and investors, and we will continue to actively seek out ways to deliv- er innovative and flexible solutions that best meet their needs,” said Bryan Harkins, co-head of markets division at Cboe Global Markets. Cboe’s speed bump will be the third implemented at major US exchange groups after IEX and NYSE Ameri- can deployed the tool in recent years, despite wide- spread outcry from incumbent exchanges over IEX’s first move to slow down HFTs with a speed bump. The exchange added that existing delay mechanisms applied by IEX and NYSE do not provide protection to market makers and participants that post two-sided markets, whereas LP² would promote price forming displayed liquidity. TECHNOLOGY Refinitiv to acquire cloud-based OMS provider AlphaDesk Acquisition to further Refinitiv end-to-end trading solution with order and portfolio management capabilities, expanding on existing execution and analytics services. R efinitiv has announced it is to acquire order manage- ment system specialist AlphaDesk to boost its end-to- end trading portfolio. Refinitiv will integrate the AlphaDesk platform, which provides order and portfolio management, risk, and compliance solutions for buy-side users, into its existing front-office suite that includes the EMS platform from REDI, which it acquired in January 2017. The vendor currently provides pre-trade data and analyt- ics through its Eikon platform, and will use the multi-asset and multi-currency reach of the AlphaDesk OMS platform 12 // TheTrade // Summer 2019 to expand its workflow capabilities as the roles of buy-side traders and portfolio managers continue to converge. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although Refinitiv stated it expects the acquisition to close in the second quarter of 2019. “Our past collaboration with AlphaDesk makes them a strong fit for us, and the integration of their platform with our existing products further expands Refinitiv’s presence as a premier trading solution for professionals across the buy-side community,” said Michael Chin, managing direc- tor and co-head of trading at Refinitiv.