Beginning tomorrow, July 26, the Toronto Stock Exchange will offer traders direct access from their desktop terminals to POSIT Canada, an anonymous, electronic order-matching system. On April 5 POSIT Canada was launched as a facility of the TSX. This first launch provided access through a web-based interface.

“POSIT Canada has become part of the equity landscape in Canada as a core offering of TSX Markets,” said Richard Nesbitt, President of TSX Markets, in a news release. “Direct access will simplify the process for traders to enter orders into the POSIT Canada call market. POSIT will now be integrated directly into the trader’s desktop and will be part of their workflow environment. Direct access is a critical component of a firm’s trade management and straight-through processing capabilities.”

POSIT Canada offers two call market matches per day, one at 10:30 ET and the other at 14:30 ET. During each match traders send their orders directly to POSIT Canada without having to disclose any trade information, and trades are matched at the mid-point of the bid/ask spread.

Since the initial launch, the average POSIT Canada liquidity pool has amounted to over $15 million per match comprising over 880,000 shares. “Now that POSIT Canada will be a destination on the trader’s desktop, we anticipate increased order flow from both buy and sell side traders,” said Nesbitt.

POSIT Canada is being licensed from the POSIT Joint Venture, a joint venture between a subsidiary of Investment Technology Group, Inc. and a subsidiary of Barra, Inc. POSIT is the world’s largest system for electronic matching of equities during the market day.