Luminex Trading & Analytics LLC, a buy side-owned trading venue delivering block executions, has added a conditional order type to its buy side-only alternative trading system (ATS). This upgrade has helped make January 2018 Luminex’s best month ever by volume. Luminex’s trading platform now supports negotiable, firm and conditional orders. The addition of conditional orders is designed to make trading on Luminex more efficient for many buy side workflows and should allow subscribers to interact with more block orders. Negotiable and firm orders continue to be available and...

TD Ameritrade is letting customers initialize trades over Twitter, the latest attempt by the discount brokerage to attract digitally savvy and younger investors, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. The firm’s Twitter “chatbot” resembles the one it launched via Facebook Messenger in August, and it is powered by an algorithm that produces “social signals.” The algorithm sifts through tweets and then rates the relevance of the information to provide “intelligence” to investors, such as volume spikes, live trading quotes and company news....

Nasdaq Inc. is relocating its global headquarters from downtown Manhattan to Times Square, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. The stock-exchange operator, which is home to about 3,900 listings, has signed a 145,000 square-foot lease to move into 4 Times Square, the Durst Organization tower where the company holds its market bell ceremonies. Nasdaq will relocate from One Liberty Plaza, which has served as the company’s home for almost 18 years. Since 1999, Nasdaq has had a presence at 4 Times Square where it launched its MarketSite facility, a space where the company...

The New York Stock Exchange, part of Intercontinental Exchange, announced that NYSE National, an electronic equities exchange, plans to commence trading on Monday, April 30, 2018.  As a trading-only venue, NYSE National will trade all U.S.-listed securities using a simple price/time priority allocation method similar to NYSE Arca, but it will be the NYSE’s only venue to offer a ‘taker-maker’ pricing model. This alternative fee structure will complement NYSE Group’s other markets and is intended to attract a new community of participants. NYSE National will...

Last week, SEC staff gave Cboe the green light for its closing-auction proposal, despite opposition from the NYSE and Nasdaq. According to a story in The Wall Street Journal, the two exchange groups will seek to have the SEC’s five commissioners reconsider that decision. Under Cboe’s proposal, traders would get a new way to execute “market-on-close” orders, in which they agree to buy or sell shares at whatever end-of-day price is determined in the auction. Instead of sending such orders at the NYSE or Nasdaq, traders could send them to Cboe, which would seek to fill...

West Corporation and Nasdaq, Inc. jointly announced that West Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the public relations (Public Relations Solutions) and webcasting and webhosting (Digital Media Services) products and services within Nasdaq’s Corporate Solutions business for approximately $335 million, subject to adjustments. Public Relations Solutions and Digital Media Services consist of a portfolio of communication tools, media intelligence and multimedia services for organizations across all industries. The products and services included in the transaction...

Thomson Reuters announced that it has signed an agreement to enter into a strategic partnership with Blackstone. As part of the transaction, Thomson Reuters will sell a 55% majority stake in its F&R business to private equity funds managed by Blackstone. The transaction values the F&R business at approximately $20 billion. Thomson Reuters will receive approximately $17 billion in gross proceeds at closing (subject to purchase price adjustments) funded by $14 billion of debt and preferred equity to be incurred by the partnership and a $3 billion cash equity contribution by...

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. announced that Sun Trading, a leading liquidity provider in the European equities market, will utilize Cboe Europe Equities’ suite of MiFID-II compliant Systematic Internalizer (SI) services, which includes SI quote distribution, bilateral connectivity and matching services, and trade reporting. Sun Trading is a global electronic market maker, providing liquidity in equity, fixed income and FX markets.  

Stock traders who want to do nighttime trading can now do so through TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. According to a story in Bloomberg news, the second-biggest discount broker now lets customers buy and sell 12 U.S. exchange-traded funds 24 hours a day on weekdays. Clients in Asia will be among the beneficiaries, gaining the ability to trade U.S. products during their daylight hours, but Americans wanting to key off late-breaking news can participate, too. The traditional exchanges operate from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. est. The reality has long been that a lot of trading takes place outside those...