Pure Trading, along with participating dealers and access vendors, will perform a fourth test of its electronic trading system on Sat. May 5 in advance of the launch of its continuous auction market.

“This represents the culmination of more than a year’s collective work by the key stakeholders and promises to be an historic moment and opportunity for all of us in the securities trading community,” said Ian Bandeen, vice chairman and CEO of Pure Trading. “We have built the first alternative visible auction market in Canada for exchange listed securities and we will bring real competition to the Canadian market for the first time.”

The system was tested industry wide successfully on Jan. 13 and Feb 3. In addition there have been ongoing rigorous daily individual dealer and vendor testing routines underway since June 2006.

During the third test on Feb. 24, retransmission issues were identified and a remediation plan was put in place. Since then, Pure Trading has been testing with principal vendors to verify that the issues have been satisfactorily addressed.

Flowing from the positive results achieved by continuous testing, Pure Trading announced on March 8 that it would organize another industry-wide test on May 5. It is anticipated that the system launch date will be set shortly after this weekend.

To ease the community’s transition to a multi-market environment, trading rules on the Pure marketplace will be almost identical to trading on other Canadian stock exchanges. Market Regulation Services is the market regulator, and the Universal Market Integrity Rules will apply to all participants trading on Pure Trading.

Pure Trading is operated by Canadian Trading and Quotation System Inc, which also operates CNQ listed market, the first new marketplace to be recognized since the implementation of National Instrument 21-101 – Marketplace Operation, and the first new Canadian stock exchange in over 70 years.

Pure Trading will be a competitive alternative to the existing exchanges, providing a new trading venue for Canadian Exchange-listed securities. This high speed trading system utilizes the highly efficient X-stream trading engine supplied by OMX of Sweden. X-stream has been modified to incorporate Canadian trading rules and message protocols.