A new stock exchange? Banks club together to plan rival NYSE

Jan. 7, 2019 / 2:57 PM GMT/ Source: CNBC.com

By Thomas Franck, CNBC and Kate Rooney, CNBC

Shares of Intercontinental Exchange — the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange — sank more than 4 percent Monday morning as some of Wall Street’s largest financial companies neared the launch of a new, low-cost rival exchange.

The new venue is called Members Exchange, or MEMX, according to a news release reviewed by CNBC. Shares of Nasdaq fell more than 3 percent in morning trading.

Nine banks, brokerages and other firms including Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments and Citadel Securities will maintain control over MEMX. MEMX investors also include investment banks Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS, as well as retail brokers Charles Schwab, E-Trade and TD Ameritrade.

“MEMX’s mission is to increase competition, improve operational transparency, further reduce fixed costs, and simplify the execution of equity trading in the U.S.,” according to the reviewed release. “In addition, MEMX will represent the interests of its founders’ collective client base, comprised of retail and institutional investors on U.S. market structure issues. MEMX will seek to offer a simple trading model with basic order types, the latest technology, and a simple, low-cost fee structure.”

Members of the investor group plan to apply for exchange status with the Securities and Exchange Commission early this year. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the upcoming exchange launch.

The launch of another stock exchange would come amid a mass migration toward cheap, no-fee investing options and exchanges across Wall Street. Another such company, the IEX Group, emerged in 2016 with a system that slowed down trading in an effort to neutralize the effect of high-frequency trading. Controversial at first, the so-called speed bumps have proliferated among U.S. market sites, though they differ from IEX’s to varying degrees.