Quote from xflat2186:
rayl,
Youâre right and youâre wrong.
Youâre right in that the crosses have to be printed (put on the tape) at one of the six exchanges. The thing is in the last 5 years the rules for crossing have changed substantially. It used to be that you had to show your orders to the pit first and then shop the other side as a broker. That was the âtime and placeâ advantage on the floor. These days brokers can shop the orders to their hearts desire and then bring in both sides of the trade and cross the trade as long as itâs in the parameters of the market, they DONâT have to let the crowd participate.
What IB does with the penny trades is when they cross the orders they just do it in the parameters of the market and shut out the MMâs. For example if the market in the XYZ July 50 calls is say 1.40 / 1.55 and they have a customer order to pay 1.55 they may elect to take the other side of that trade and print them at 1.54 or they may have 1.55 customer sellers who have indicated they have a penny or two room as a seller and they cross customer to customer at 1.54 or 1.53.
Youâre also right in that customers always have parity and priority over MMâs and firm/bd orders. Youâre also right on the money with putting up the straight equities, any stock transaction can be crossed at any price within the high and low prints on the day.
Hope this helps,
Jim
You are not allowed to cross a U.S. listed options transaction w/o making the quote available for public execution on an exchange. My statement is ONLY for US listed options. There is no concept of putting it on the tape in options as with equities.
Actually, you can hear the Citadel (options MM / 10% daily US options volume) Execution Services president (Matt Andresen) commenting about this very topic:
http://www.iian.ibeam.com/events/thom001/22466/
(The ATS session, starting at time marker 23:38)
"The idea you can quote unquote internalize it [order flow].... Options is not equities.... The first is, there is no such thing as internalization in the options market. In the equities market, I can do a trade... I'm going to fill it out of my own inventory. That's a real trade. It's done. All I have to do then is hand around [sic], turn around and print it to an exchange. There is no such mechanism in the options market and none will be contemplated in the regulatory environment. So if you want to do a trade in the options market and you have a 10 contract order, you have to send it down to an exchange. And you can't tell your quoter that it is coming. There is a complete wall there... If you're looking for the ease of internalization, it's much much harder because of that.... The only way you're able to interact with that order is if you have an out-loud quote in the marketplace available not just to your internal flow, but also to Goldman Sach's prop desk"
So his statement is stronger than even my assertion was. I didn't realize that the Chinese wall is required by regulation, so that you cannot send a matched pair of orders from customer and from your internal desk bec your internal desk is not allow to see the customer quote.