Wall St. Hungry for Alternative Trading Systems
a similar system competitor's month growth:
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OptiMark went live trading one symbol (MMM)
on January 29th, 1999. The number of tradable
symbols listed increased to five on February
4th, 35 on February 10th, 105 on February 17th
and 205 on February 23rd.
Daily trading volume has trended upwards over
time and as additional symbols were added.
The average daily trading volume over the last
five trading days was 1,450,000 shares per day.
At month's end, 135 buy and sell side firms
were "Trade-Ready" in OptiMark, up from 114
on January 29th. Trade-Ready means that a
firm is fully ready to trade, having the
technology available on its traders' desks, all
legal agreements in place, trading limits
established, clearing brokers designated and
traders trained to use the system.
Uptime of the OptiMark Trading System was
99%, with less than two hours unavailable
during the 20 trading days to date.
Wide Web at optimark.com.
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Here's more Bullish potential talk
for alternative trading systems:
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The former exchange specialist and Instinet Corp.
chief executive has invested almost $5 million of his
own money into his company, OptiMark Technologies
Inc., and has convinced investors like Goldman, Sachs
& Co. and Dow Jones & Co. to sink a total of $150
million into his creation. They are all betting that the
super computer-driven system he designed with his
partner, Terry Rickard, will change the way the world's
institutions trade stocks.
The payoff could be huge. Lupien casually throws
around predictions of 100% growthÑper quarterÑfor
OptiMark, and confidently talks of the potential for
hitting $1 billion in revenues within three or four years.
Such projections for a company that has yet to
generate a single dollar in revenues would seem
absurd if it weren't for Lupien's track record.
Lupien has been a force behind two of the biggest
electronic alterations of the overall structure of U.S.
equity marketsÑthe creation in 1978 of the Intermarket
Trading System that links all of the nation's
exchanges, and the establishment of Instinet as a
significant market force in the 1980s.
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YOU GOTTA LOVE THIS PART:
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So when Lupien says that he is sitting atop the crest
of the next wave of the future, Wall Street perks up
and opens its checkbooks. In the $100 million private
placement that OptiMark wrapped up in September,
the investor list read like a veritable Who's Who of
finance: PaineWebber, Bankers Trust, Hambrecht &
Quist, Credit Suisse First Boston, Loomis, Sayles &
Co. and 26 other firms anteed up funds. More than 90
broker dealers, including 24 of the top 25 firms in the
field, and 155 buy-side institutions already have signed
on to use the OptiMark system when it makes its
much-anticipated and often-delayed debut as part of
the Pacific Exchange. Nasdaq even plans to add the
system to its "market-of-markets" in the spring, a
development that Lupien calls a "company-maker."
All of this early success has not gone unnoticed by
the powers that currently dominate stock trading. In
fact, it has raised the ire of the New York Stock
Exchange, which charges that Lupien and OptiMark
are trying to use the new system as a "back door" to
gain entry into its market. To protect its own
interestsÑand that of its member firmsÑthe NYSE is
fighting to limit OptiMark's access to the ITS. The
Securities and Exchange Commission will settle the
matter, presumably before OptiMark's launch, which is
now scheduled for early January. |
