Who We Are
ELX Futures, L.P. (ELX Futures) is a new fully regulated electronic futures exchange formed in December 2007 by leading financial institutions to establish a faster, more efficient competitive alternative for global market participants trading futures contracts. Starting July 10, 2009, with a slate of four U.S. Treasury futures contracts, ELX Futures will allow for market arbitrage, outright and spread execution and cash/futures basis trading through multiple front ends and an ultra fast matching engine.
ELX Futures’ Notables
With major firms linking ELX Futures’ prices with other related cash and futures markets’ prices, ELX will provide competitive market prices at lower cost. Users meeting a low Average Daily Volume threshold of 401 contract sides will pay fees of 9¢/side, including clearing. Block trades have no fee surcharge, and must meet a minimum volume of 1000 contracts in Notes, and 500 contracts in Bonds. There are no EFP or Give-Up surcharges. Basis trades have ultra low latency since the BGC cash market and ELX Futures exchange are collocated and share the eSpeed platform..
Technology
ELX will use the proven technology of the BGC Partners’ eSpeed platform. BGC is one of the two largest providers of electronic brokerage services for cash financial products in the United States and abroad. The eSpeed platform has been modified for futures executions, and enhanced for additional capacity and speed. eSpeed has been benchmarked at execution speeds that will make it the fastest execution platform for US Treasury futures contracts domiciled in the United States. ELX will allow its users to connect to the eSpeed platform in one of several ways: directly through eSpeed’s proprietary Application Protocol Interface (API); through an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) which has itself programmed to eSpeed’s API or via Financial Information eXchange (FIX) Protocol, an industry standard communication protocol. ELX will have the advantage of connectivity from Day One because of its partnership with eSpeed technology, which is already used by many institutions
Clearing