To Our Valued Customers: On Friday, May 2, 2003 Electronic Trading Group (ETG), LLC signed a letter of intent to acquire the ProTrader Securities broker-dealer from Instinet Corporation. With headquarters in New York City, ETG is a national broker-dealer specializing in direct-access trading and a member of the NASD and SIPC with approximately 300 traders operating from 23 offices nationwide. A partnership with ProTrader Securities represents significant beneficial opportunities for ETG and ProTrader Securities clients. All ETG customers will soon be trading the markets clearing through Instinet Clearing Services via Instinet's gr8trade software and ProTrader customers will have access to ETG products and services. Detail of the benefits of the partnership agreement between ETG and ProTrader Securities will be communicated as soon as the deal is officially completed. Instinet entered into this agreement in order to strengthen and expand its presence in the direct-access market. Instinet remains firmly committed to developing and supporting the direct-access business via the continued development of gr8trade software and expanding their clearing business market-share. We anticipate very few changes to your trading account and service- you'll still be trading your account using Instinet's gr8trade software and clearing your trades via Instinet's Clearing Services. We expect to complete the transaction within the next few weeks and will provide you with more detail as we move forward. In the meantime, you can learn more about ETG by visiting their website at www.etgtrade.com. As always, thank you for your continuing business. Sincerely, Kimberly Hicks CEO Protrader Securities
more paperwork? perhaps some of the traders on PT's retail side (how many are left though?) will be given the choice of getting licensed (or???) and get access to some real buying power. The more perplexing question is what in the heck is ETG doing continuing to move away from SLK and redi+, why would anyone do that, do they know that those are the leading platforms going into 1997. Oh wait, it's 03. Nevermind. Man they need to change their website quick though. How embarrassing. LOL. "ETG has, from its inception, used Spear, Leeds & Kellogg (SLK) to clear and process its trades and to provide order entry systems, including the REDI Plus system. ETG, with year 2001 trading volume exceeding 2.5 billion shares, requires the most efficient trade clearance and processing and SLK is uniquely positioned to meet these demands. "
trust me, some are going to hate gr8trade....not because it is a good or bad platform, but some traders just hate the unfamiliar. some of these guys have traded listed via redi plus for appx. 4 years!!!! should be interesting.............
Smart router ROCKS! Instinet Smart Router Pricing Change On Monday, pricing for Instinet Smart Router Orders will be changed to a flat $0.004 per share, no matter the ultimate execution destination. NO ADDITIONAL ECN OR EXCHANGE FEES WILL BE CHARGED! In most cases, ProTrader's new INCA Smart Router Pricing will result in less fees per transaction for traders. For example, 1000 shares executed through INCA Smart Router will be charged a base commission fee plus $4.00 ($0.004 x 1000 shares) for the execution - no matter which exhange or ECN ultimately executed the transaction. In the past, traders would pay for the Smart Router Trade, PLUS any ECN or Exchange fees. On Monday, May 19th, Instinet will put into production a new release of the Instinet Trading Portal. When you log onto the Portal you will have access to several new enhancements (listed below) including SmartRouting destinations for Listed Stocks. The destination of SMART will now be the default for your Listed Stocks. The destination of SMART will route your Listed Orders as follows: Instinet Smart Router sprays your Listed order to all major liquidity pools including Instinet and Island books, ARCX, CAES, and DOT. If your order becomes unmarketable, it is placed on the Instinet book and will be resprayed if it becomes marketable again. Below please find a list of the new features as well as details on the New Smart Router functionality for Listed Stocks. If you have any questions please call your Instinet representative. · Smart Routing destinations for Listed securities · Indication of your order in the Instinet Book · Quick revise · New custom order ticket options and symbol defaults · Export data from Order Information window into an Excel spreadsheet · Management of the Destination dropdown list on the order ticket
Yeah, it is already available on nasdaq but there is no hot key for it yet so most people don't use it, but we have been playing around it with it is pretty cool. Haven't seen anyone do enough volume with it to know how well it works, but instinet seems pretty proud of it. I'm still reading up on the documentation myself. FWIW, spoke with some of the techies at protrader today and they said that a big software upgrade was supposed to be out at the end of the month. Hopefully they aren't putting us on this time. Been end of the month so many times, I actually asked twice "THIS MONTH". May, MAY!!! ARe you sure? LOL.
Ive been hearing about the upgrade myself, seems when Protrader opened the ETG account, the ETG guys wanted open book and a few other things they are used to having at Redi. I Just hope the book issues get cleared up once and for all. Today on the UM release I was trying to swipe stock when the entire system reconnected on me and the books blew 5 times during the volume surge. Add in the Nasdaq quote problem and it was a fiasco. Needless to say, it was pretty disappointing, the best move of the month IMO, and the system ruined the opportunity
Yeah ETG had a list of stuff they wanted, about 50+ things. From what I gather instinet is atleast 3 months late delivering most of it.