A changing trading landscape in Canada has led to ITG designing a new smart order router specifically for the market.

“There has been a fundamental shift in the market structure in Canada over the past couple of years,” said NickThadaney, chief executive officer of ITG Canada. “It’s gone from one market to a multitude of markets. A new community of user has emerged, the high frequency trader. The effect that it has had on executing in the market was reasonably substantial.”

According to Thadaney, the move to introduce a new smart order router came after customer feedback. Orders that were available one second were unavailable the next.

“What you see is not what you get,” said Thadaney. “One of the reasons for that, among a number of reasons, is this new community of user, this new community of market participant, which has changed the way markets actually operate.”

ITG Canada’s new router has increased speed and better targets visible liquidity. It uses existing technology found on ITG’s other routers, but is optimized and tailored for the Canadian marketplace. It also complies with all the best price and best execution regulations in Canada.

“The problem we found in Canada was unique to our marketplace, given our market structure,” said Thadaney. “So a lot of the elements and technology that exist in this router, are common in our others, so it’s not dramatically different, but the way it’s constructed, it optimizes our market structure.”

The router connects to all of the exchange and off-exchange trading platforms in Canada, including ATSs and dark pools, totaling in the low double digits. The newest of these venues was launched last week in the form of Goldman Sachs’ Sigma X.