Investment exchange Plus Markets has increased the
number of trades it completes per month by more than six times
since completing theimplementation of its OMX trading
platform.
Last month the exchange executed 397,422 trades, compared with
64,311 in the month before its OMX X-stream platform going
live.
The exchange was granted recognised investment exchange status
in last year, which enabled it to increase the variety of stocks it
quotes.
Brian Taylor, chief technology officer at the company, said Plus
Markets's previous systems would not have been able to process
these volumes.
"Prior to 2007, technology was the biggest barrier to our
growth," he said.
X-stream is a version of OMX's trading software, which is used
by some 15 trading venues.
Plus Markets spent £6.7m on upgrading to X-stream in a
six-month project.
The previous in-house developed system enabled the exchange to
deal in stocks for up to 1,500 companies. Since the upgrade this
has risen to 7,500 companies, with no limit to the number of
companies that can be added.
Brian Taylor said one of the advantages of using a packaged
product is that it is tried and tested, so Plus Markets did not
have to spend heavily on testing. Although X-stream is a package,
it is possible to tweak it to meet the needs of the exchange.
"We have already started upgrading the system to add new
services," said Taylor.
The arrival of the
Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid), which
introduces a requirement for investment firms to use multiple
trading venues to ensure they have achieved the
best available deal , has also increased trading volumes.
"These are extremely encouraging numbers which demonstrate that
under Mifid transaction volume is flowing to Plus Markets," said
business development director Cyril Théret.
Plus Markets makes its money when investment firms and brokers
license its software terminal, which enables them to trade.
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