PHILADELPHIA - September 12, 2006
- The Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX) announced today that
its wholly owned subsidiary, the Philadelphia Board of Trade
(PBOT), will re-launch as a fully electronic marketplace on
October 6. PBOT’s marketplace will leverage the established
success of the PHLX XL options trading platform and will position
itself as a product “greenhouse,” to market novel
products and trading instruments that complement existing futures
product suites trading in the US and internationally.
“Our overall strategy of utilizing our proprietary
platform to support trading in multiple assets classes is well
on its way to delivery with the addition of PBOT to the PHLX
electronic trading environment,” said Meyer “Sandy”
Frucher, PHLX’s chairman and CEO. “PBOT will ultimately
be a destination for a diverse array of new futures product
classes with an expanded selection of maturities. Our performance
in the options space has demonstrated our superior trading technology,
an attractive market model and an eagerness to bring new products
to market. We believe that working with strategic partners in
the fertile futures arena will enhance the trading choices across
the spectrum of institutional and retail end-users,” said
Frucher.
PBOT was originally approved as a designated contract
market by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in
1985 with a plan to list futures - style products on interest
rates and foreign currencies. Trading volume in these products
increased in the late nineties with concurrent volume increases
in PHLX foreign currency options. When competitive market changes
began to favor an electronic forum, trading activity on PBOT
declined to the point that its contract market designation was
rescinded for dormancy in 2005. During this timeframe, PHLX
concentrated its efforts on the build out of a securities options
streaming market model.
In 2006, PHLX management, in concert with the
Board of Governors, put in place all the necessary regulatory,
governance and operational infrastructure for the evolution
of the PBOT model, the re-launch of which is a critical component
of the Exchange’s global strategy to offer to the capital
markets one seamless connection to three marketplaces (equities,
options and futures). Accordingly, CFTC approved PBOT’s
application for reinstatement as a designated contract market
on May 26, 2006.
“The futures space has pent-up demand for
new trading vehicles,” said Frucher, “and we are
eager to partner with firms and bring that intellectual capital
to the market. The re-invention of PBOT is a key first step
to moving our exchange model to its ultimate position as a single
point of access for firms through which they can execute transactions
in three distinct marketplaces for thousands of different products
that the investing public can use in their portfolios. When
coupled with an integrated pricing model, we think PHLX and
PBOT will be in the vanguard of American exchanges.”
The Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded in
1790. The PHLX trades 1,943 stocks, 2,231 equity options, 19
sectors index options, and currency options and futures. For
more information about the PHLX and its products, visit www.phlx.com.
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