US-based buy-side owned block trading platform Luminex Trading & Analytics has made significant improvements to the speed of its block trading platform’s matching engine.
The dark pool operator said the speed upgrade was designed and implemented in partnership with LeveL ATS, which processes more than 100 million shares a day.
“While most trades on our platform still involve a human in the process, electronic interaction is how trades are executed,” said Jonathan Clark, CEO, and founder of Luminex Trading & Analytics.
“Until now, trading blocks has been among the slower processes on a trading desk. Luminex has been a pioneer in bringing safety to block trading, and today we’re introducing unprecedented speed to the process as well.”
Since its inception in 2015, participants have traded more than 7.7 billion shares coming to a total of over $536 billion. Luminex’s average natural block trade size is among the top in FINRA’s 10k block trading category, recording 51,000 shares in September this year.
“Our flexibility and adaptability have been key to our growth,” added Clark. “Whether it has been adding conditional orders, completely redoing our user interface, or upgrading our speed, our team has come through each time, and our clients have responded each time, with our average daily volume going up in each case.”
Luminex added conditional order types to its platform in early 2018 in response to demands from users that the order type would allow them to better integrate the platform with buy-side workflows.
More recently in August, Liquidnet sales veteran Ilisa Gruber joined Luminex in a senior sales role, responsible for increasing engagement with clients and managing Luminex’s growth in the US Midwest and other regions.