From this press release, it sounds like nasdaq is opening up supermontage so that everyone can enter limit orders. Could be a big blow to ecns if it pans out. ------- NASDAQ Proposal to Expand Access to SuperMontage Is Approved by SEC Monday February 3, 5:23 pm ET NEW YORK, Feb. 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc. (NASDAQ®) today announced that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved its proposal to allow NASDAQ participants that are not registered market makers to represent limit orders from a variety of investors in the new SuperMontage trading platform. The SEC has approved this change as a 90-day pilot program. ADVERTISEMENT The change will allow broker-dealers, including active traders, and other order-entry firms that currently do not have direct access to SuperMontage to enter customer and proprietary limit orders into the system for the first time. Additionally, market makers will be able for the first time to display orders in SuperMontage in those stocks in which they do not make a market. "The value that market makers bring to the market and to their customers is fundamental to the success of NASDAQ," said Richard G. Ketchum, president and deputy chairman, NASDAQ. "Yet over the past few months, more and more orders, generated by non market-making broker-dealers, are displayed in unlinked markets because of those firms' inability to directly enter orders into SuperMontage. We believe that it is critical to bring this liquidity back to SuperMontage and we're expanding access to the system in order to allow this to happen." Dean Furbush, executive vice president of NASDAQ Transaction Services, stated, "The enhancement will increase competition and choice for participants' order flow. By expanding access, this step will further solidify SuperMontage as the center of liquidity." The expanded access will be made available through the trading platform's "SIZE" Market Participant Identifier (MPID) and will go into effect on Monday, February 10, 2003. SuperMontage has demonstrated that it can operate with total reliability under all market conditions, exhibiting increased speed and depth without sacrificing market quality. NASDAQ (OTC Bulletin Board: NDAQ - News) is the world's largest electronic stock market. With approximately 3,700 companies, NASDAQ lists more companies and trades more shares per day than any other U.S. market. It is home to category-defining companies that are leaders across all areas of business including technology, retail, communications, financial services, media and biotechnology industries. NASDAQ is a key driver of capital formation. For more information about NASDAQ, visit the NASDAQ Web site at http://www.NASDAQ.com or the NASDAQ Newsroom(SM) at http://www.NASDAQnews.com.
I had heard that this was coming and it should really be no surprise. Nasdaq has one purpose with Supermontage and that is to eliminate the ECNs by being more like one itself. The ECNs have been kicking the Nasdaq's ass for a while now and consistently grabbing a bigger % of the liquidity out there, mostly by just giving people what they want, access, functionality and better technology. I think it proves that "daytraders" are a very legitimate part of the market place. ECNs kicked open the door to the club, active traders have moved in and now the world is upside down for the Nasdaq. Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Hopefully in the end the guys who started the ball rolling in the first place (the ECNs) don't get crushed by the monopoly of the NASD! The one thing I think that the ECNs will still have as an advantage, for a while anyways, is the ability to trade within the spread (ie. shave the penny spread). I believe that bids and offers posted on size will only be at even 1 penny increments. Here's watching with great interest. MACD
I just read from an article the following about supermontage volume. The article was from Jan 22, 2003. I am surprised they lost more volume after supermontage. "The system has not yet produced a big bang in market share for Nasdaq. While Nasdaq's share of trading in its own stocks averaged roughly 28.5 percent ahead of SuperMontage, that share has since fallen below 20 percent, according to Putnam Lovell NBF Securities Inc. When Archipelago migrates its business to its own exchange, it will take another 2 percent of market share away from Nasdaq, said Putnam Lovell analyst Todd Halky. Two percent of the market is 10 percent of SuperMontage's business, Halky said. "That's significant.""