When it comes to trading NYSE stocks, Laser offers 3 routes: NYFD, MLCO, and BELZ. Do these routes cost more to route through than say a direct route to the "NYSE", which Sterling seems to have?
I can't answer your question completely, but when I was with Genesis each of those routes had their own fee and speed fyi.
Yes Dustin, thats why i am wondering if the fact that Genesis does not provide a "direct route" to the NYSE means that everybody who trades through Genesis is systematically paying more fees because they have to send their NYSE orders to one of these 3 routes, as opposed to other platforms which can have a "direct route" to NYSE? Can anyone shed more light on this?
They must not hold or own a seat on NYSE and thus need to trade through a group that does. They self clear thus most large clearing firms have the seats in house and thus offer the direct lines or access to the B/D that use them. This is my guess and only that but I have years of back office experience and this is the way that looks. Maybe they have NYSE added fees or 5 to 10 mills. Not sure.....another guess. Seat owners pay 0 and mark up the line access to others down the food chain.
In order to send the flow directly to NYSE one has to be a NYSE member, which costs several million $$ (don't remember the exact number for 2007). The only alternative is to use DMA of any member (there are plenty of them), and pay for that flow.
Thanks guys.. i thought genesis was big enough to have such a seat, but i guess they dont... but i see that IB has a "NYSE" route on their TWS. I wonder if that means that they have an NYSE seat and therefore save their customers those additional charges that result from going to the NYSE through a 3rd party...
the firm I'm with uses sterling and their "nyse" route is Merryl Lynch... another firm I know has nyfix set as their NYSE option... So just because it says "NYSE" as an option doesn't mean they own a seat / have a direct route etc... - mnx
Laser vs Sterling is not a direct comparison. Sterling is a trading front end that is used by various brokers for execution. Laser, as far as I know, is a front end execution for Genesis Securities only. I don't believe they license the software since it is so closely tied to their servers for execution, thus their NASD certified platform status. The affiliation you seek depends on the particular brokerage, and if your broker has a seat on the NYSE, then you can route that way, but Genesis is only a member of ISE, Nasd, NASDAQ, and ARCA, so they have to pay to route. IB routes directly to NYSE because yes, they are an NYSE member. You can check your broker's affiliations by doing a FINRA broker check. There you can see which organizations they are members of (only if they are NASD registered - brokers, like Bright, that are only exchange registered and not NASD will not be found in this section).
It basically boils down to the Clearing Firm. With Goldman, we can route pretty much anywhere we like, and/or use their Sigma smart router to find the hidden liquidity between posted bids and offers. We get paid for providing liquidity, and we pay to take liquidity, so we do our best to help our traders understand the routing options. Don
Don, It would be helpful if you could post a list of the routes available to Bright traders for an NYSE stock ("pretty much anywhere" makes it hard for a comparison). I'll start the list with the obvious candidates: INET, BATS, ARCA... what else do you have? Thanks.