ATS's chipping at mainland Europe

For the week ended July 9, 2010; as usual, the most active ATS was Alpha
Trading Systems, which averaged 132.5 million shares per day and in second
place was Chi-X Canada, with 33.2 million shares. Pure Trading averaged 16.3
million. Dark pool Match Now was in fourth place with 6.5 million, and in last
place was Omega ATS, with 2.9 million. Combining their volumes, the ATSs
accounted for 27.6 per cent of the Canadian volume, up from 13.3 per cent one
year ago.

Match Now is planning to change the way it handles anonymous orders. To

reduce execution fees for its subscribers, it plans to first match orders with
those from the same broker number before executing a match with another broker.

Also this week, TMX Group released its June, 2010, trading statistics.
Trading volume in June was 11.9 billion shares, down from 14.1 billion last
month. However, TMX Group says that on a year-to-date basis volume, value and
transactions continued to show strong increases. The TSX Venture Exchange and
the Montreal Exchange both reported higher trading volumes than last year,
while the Toronto Stock Exchange's volumes declined. The TSX averaged 362
million shares a day, down from 493.5 million last June.

Exchanges around the world are losing orders to ATSs offering more
attractive pricing and faster execution. The connotation-loaded buzzword used
by the former monopolies to describe this trend is "fragmentation."
Exchanges that were once big, solid and dependable are being chipped away at by
the fragmenters -- not good.

Steve Grob, director of strategy for European trading system Fidessa, says
that fragmentation is beginning to spread from London to the rest of Europe.
(ATSs in Europe are called multilateral trading facilities, or MTFs.) In an
article on Fidessa's website, Mr. Grob says, "The easy prey within London
has all been gobbled up, according to the law of diminishing marginal returns,
and it looks like the MTFs are turning their marketing attention to mainland
Europe, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Nordics."

Chief executive officer of Chi-X MTF, Alasdair Haynes, says it captured

17.25 per cent of the European market in June, up from 15.12 per cent in
January. Market share is down for the Deutsche Borse, SIX Swiss Exchange and
NYSE Euronext. Euronext has domestic exchanges in Paris, Lisbon, Amsterdam and
Brussels. In June, its Pan-European market share had fallen to 17.4 per cent
from 19.6 per cent last year.

by Stockwatch Business Reporter