10:20 AM
ELECTRONIC TRADING
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have finalized customer margin rules for single-stock futures products. The completion of the margin rules was seen as the last major hurdle before trading of these products can begin at four exchanges: NQLX, OneChicago, the American Stock Exchange and the Island Futures Exchange. That quartet of markets is expected to begin trading SSF contracts later this year.
BrokerTec Futures Exchange (BTEX), an all-electronic futures market for U.S. Treasury bond and note futures, traded its one-millionth contact on July 22. BTEX, the only fully electronic futures market in the United States, was launched on Nov. 30,2001.
The Brut ECN has completed a FIX interface to SunGard's Decalog trade-order management system. Through the SunGard Transaction Network (STN), Decalog users will now be able to trade Nasdaq and U.S. exchange-listed equities via Brut.
Trading volume on Globex, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's electronic-trading system, set a new single-day volume record on July 22, with 1,333,476 contracts traded. The Merc's E-mini S&P 500 futures contract also set a single-day record on July 22, trading 925,798 contracts.