CNQ launches Pure electronic securities-trading execution system
Canadian Trading & Quotation System Inc., operator of the CNQ alternative small-stock market, said Friday its Pure Trading facility has launched its continuous auction, an execution system for high-speed, high-volume securities transactions.
Pure “is the first competitive fully electronic equity market to ever launch in Canada,” CNQ said, and has signed up 65 investment dealers which together handle 95 per cent of Canada’s equity trading volume.
A spokesman for TSX Group Inc. (TSX:X) played down the threat, arguing that the established market has the world’s lowest trading fees and is set to start up the fastest trading system.
Pure Trading started Friday morning, offering trade execution in three issues - Aber Diamonds (TSX:ABZ), Fairfax Financial (TSX:FFH) and the iShares Canadian S&P/TSX Energy Sector Index Fund (TSX:XEG) - with additional stocks to be added later in consultation with the dealers.
CNQ, along with the oncoming big-bank system known as Alpha and others looking to take trading business away from TSX Group face an uphill slog, TSX spokesman Steve Kee said in an e-mail distributed early Friday before Pure Trading started up.
Kee cited a report from State Street consultancy Elkins/McSherry which found Canadian trading fees at 0.20 basis points are the lowest in the world, little more than half those in New York and London. He noted that since that second-quarter survey TSX has cut its fees further.
Additionally, the TSX Quantum technology, to be rolled out in the fourth quarter, “will make us as fast or faster than any exchange in the world.”
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