Boston Options Exchange Eliminates Make or Take Pricing

The Boston Options Exchange ("BOX") will eliminate Make or Take pricing on all Penny Pilot Classes effective September 1, pending regulatory approval. BOX had recently eliminated Make or Take fees for SPY, QQQQ and IWM on July 2. With this change, trade executions for public customers will not be subject to a trading fee on any of the current 57 classes, which are part of the Penny Pilot Program, while all other account types will be subject to a fee of 20 cents per contract. The changes do not affect the fee structure of the Non-Penny Classes where all accounts that remove liquidity receive a credit.

“Make or Take pricing was an experiment which failed to raise BOX’s market share,” said William Easley, Vice Chairman of BOX, in a company statement. “We often found ourselves as last choice on inter-market linkage routers even when we matched NBBO."

The Boston Options Exchange Group, LLC (BOX) is an all-electronic equity options market that is jointly owned by the TMX Group and seven broker dealers. BOX was established in 2002 and launched trading in February 2004 as an alternative to the market models in existence at the time. Since inception, BOX has provided its participants with an efficient and transparent marketplace, cutting edge technology and best price filtering for customer order execution.

BOX offers many distinctive features as well as an innovative market structure. Its ultra-low latency trading engine has hubs in Chicago and New York. Matching is executed based on price-time priority, with no order cancellation fees. Other key features of BOX are its Price Improvement Period (PIP) auction, which has returned over $250 million to customers since BOX's launch, and multiple competing market makers. There are no DPMs or specialists, and BOX has no seats to buy or lease. BOX has very simple fee structures.