BIDS Hooks Up the Buy Side

BIDS Trading announced connections to Goldman Sach's REDIPlus, JP Morgan's Neovest and Morgan Stanley's Passport Connect electronic trading platforms.Institutional customers on the three platforms will now be able to anonymously trade blocks of U.S. equities in the BIDS alternative trading system (ATS). "This is the first step in the last piece of the puzzle," says Tim Mahoney, chief executive officer of BIDS Trading. "This is the first opportunity for the buy side to have access to the liquidity."

Mahoney says that BIDS has been building liquidity with its sell side customers since its launch in April and plans to continue to build out the necessary EMS and OMS connections to bring on the buy side.

"We have a variety of announcements in the coming weeks and months," says Mahoney. "We will connect to all EMS and OMS' out there, so that whatever system a buy side firm uses, they can access BIDS."

He adds that BIDS was designed to be an open network for the buy and sell side with flexible options for matching and order types. But he says the buy side is likely to bring some different tactics to the BIDS system as they come on board.

"Certainly the buy and the sell side use these systems differently," says Mahoney. "Negotiation is a buy side phenomenon so we expect an uptake of the negotiation model as the buy side come on."

Mahoney says that BIDS has seen volumes on the rise, trading more than 40 million a day shares twice in the last few weeks. "We recognize this is a marathon, not a sprint," he says.