GOLDMAN SACHS ADDS FEATURES TO LISTED OPTIONS OFFERING

Posted March 24, 2009

NEW YORK – Goldman Sachs Electronic Trading (GSET) announced today several new features of its US listed options offering, including three new algorithms (Pegging, Volatility Limit, and Strike), the ability to auto-hedge options orders, and a more diverse offering of connectivity to broker-neutral trading and pricing platforms.

The addition of Pegging, Volatility Limit and Strike brings GSET’s total number of advanced options trading strategies to seven. The Pegging algorithm allows the user to peg all or a portion of an order to the bid or offer. The Volatility Limit algorithm orders will take the user’s assumptions on volatility, interest rates and dividends to monitor the market and sweep all liquidity when marketable. Building on the SIGMA options smart router, Strike offers the elements of market sweeping, pegging, stealth and discretion all in one algorithm.

“In this period of sustained market volatility, clients applying options strategies are faced with an entirely new set of opportunities and challenges,” says J.P. Xenakis, Head of Electronic Listed Options Sales at GSET. “We’ve seen a significant increase in client demand to trade options electronically. We recognized the importance of providing clients with the appropriate algorithmic strategies and trading tools – and enabling them to access these resources from the EMS of their choice.”

An additional enhancement to the options algorithmic suite is the ability for customers to auto-hedge their positions. This enables option traders to automatically execute equity hedges in real time as the option order is filled. This logic will leverage the available suite of equity algorithms to achieve immediate execution, while minimizing market impact by interacting with Goldman Sachs’ dark pool, SIGMA X. Auto-hedging can be applied to any of the existing options algorithms.