Scoach, the European exchange for certificates and warrants, has been offering trading in around 300,000 products on a new version of the fully electronic trading platform, Xetra, since Monday.
This means that, with immediate effect, over 260 banks and brokerage firms 100 of which are based abroad have direct access to the world’s broadest range of structured products. In the past, these products were traded on the trading floor of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
The new version of Xetra uses two new market models designed to further optimise liquidity in securities trading: first, a model allowing certificate and warrant issuers to directly quote bid and ask prices for their own products on an ongoing basis. Second, a model that subjects liquidity providers known as “specialists” to the obligation to execute orders based on the issuer quote.
Both models will allow private investors across Europe to benefit from the fastest order execution and lowest transaction costs in fully electronic trading. Investors that want to place orders with Scoach will continue to select “Frankfurt” as the stock exchange in the order mask as usual.
“The new Xetra version is a major step into the electronic stock exchange future in terms of both functionality and technology. It allows the bundling of liquidity for securities from all asset classes on a highly efficient platform, thus offering investors throughout Europe super-fast execution at the best possible prices”, says Frank Gerstenschlger, executive board member responsible for the cash market at Deutsche Brse and member of the supervisory board of Scoach.
Furthermore, Xetra now uses the latest high-performance processors, making the system even faster and safer for all trading participants, as well as for special trading models such as algorithmic trading. Furthermore, capacities were increased in order to allow trading in several hundred thousand different securities.