On September 14, MEMX’s new customer priority, pro-rata options exchange, MX2 Options will begin trading, and this past weekend we successfully held the first of our three industry testing sessions, or User Acceptance Tests (UAT).

Several members participated as we connected to the OCC and  OPRA from our production data center, the Equinix NY4 facility, in Secaucus NJ. The Trading System was configured for production operations with participating clients using production assigned ports and settings. We are very satisfied that the majority of the functionality that was tested is working and excited to have had our 1st successful industry test.

Our second UAT is scheduled for August 29th, with a third UAT the Saturday before we begin live trading.  The 10 symbols we plan to begin trading on September 14 are below.

Then on September 16, we will add an additional 125 symbols, two days later on the 18th we will add another 150 for a total of 185 names the first week. The following 7 business days will see us scaling by 500 symbols a day to get us to all names by the 29th.  As with any rollout, this is subject to change if circumstances warrant a reevaluation, but we are hoping to become fully operational in an efficient, orderly fashion.

Continuing the rollout as follows*:

In other MX2 developments, after discussions with many of our members and our options market structure committee, we have decided to create a Lead Market Maker program for MX2. Already we have had several firms commit to becoming LMMs on MX2 and we are currently working on initial symbol assignments.  For more details on our technical specifications and symbol launch schedule, visit our options trading resources page on info.memxtrading.com.

We are truly excited to be expanding our offering for members with a second options exchange. We know that in many ways a new venue is a shared effort and we thank you members for your feedback and support of MX2!

Geralyn Endo, Head of Options Business Development

Source: MEMX