ELX Futures, L.P. (ELX Futures) is a fully regulated electronic futures exchange formed in December 2007 by leading global financial institutions and launched on July 10, 2009 to establish a faster, more efficient competitive alternative for global market participants trading futures contracts. ELX Futures allows for market arbitrage, outright and spread execution and cash/futures basis trading through multiple front ends and an ultra fast matching engine.
With major firms linking ELX Futures’ prices with other related cash and futures markets’ prices, ELX provides a simplified fee structure with competitive market prices at lower cost for both exchange fees and block trades with 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.
ELX uses the proven technology of 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.
Clearing services for ELX are provided by the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), the world’s largest derivatives clearing organization.