ITG ADDS NEW MATCHING CROSS TO COMBAT ILLIQUID POINT OF DAY

Posted October 15, 2008

NEW YORK – Investment Technology Group Inc. has introduced a daily POSIT Match point-in-time cross. The “Power Match” is a new midday crossing session exclusively for block trades over 10,000 shares and will take place at 1 p.m. Eastern Time. The concentrated match represents the next evolution in point-in-time crossing, which ITG introduced over 20 years ago with POSIT Match.

The “Power Match” will provide clients with concentrated, block liquidity at one of the most illiquid times of the day. Liquidity tends to follow a certain pattern, with more liquidity in the market at the start and close of each trading day, and less liquidity at midday. Visually, this concave line is sometimes referred to as the liquidity “smile.”

“For the past 20 years, POSIT has been a leader in providing block liquidity and anonymity to the buy side,” saiys Chris Heckman, Managing Director at ITG. “Clients utilize point-in-time crossing as a key aggregation tool for block liquidity in a fragmented marketplace. The addition of the ‘Power Match’ to the scheduled cross will provide a concentrated source of liquidity at an illiquid point in the trading day.”