Canadian Quotation and Trading System, Inc. (CNQ) has announced Pure Trading, the name of its new high performance alternative market for Canadian equity securities.

The company is hoping to emulate the success of similar electronic trading systems in the United States and Europe such as Inet ATS and Archipelago Exchange, which was recently taken over by the New York Stock Exchange.

CNQ says Pure Trading will offer dealers a better, faster and cheap way to trade stocks listed on the Toronto Stock Exechange and TSX Venture Exchange.

“You have to be an IDA member, you must be a dealer, so we are not trying to do one of those things where we are trying to rearrange the dealer community,” says Ian Bandeen, vice chairman and CEO of Pure Trading.

CNQ says that it plans to charge Pure Trading broker-customers a flat fee of $1 a trade or a variable fee of 1/10th of a cent a share, but will cap aggregate monthly fees at $30,000 in its first year of operation, rising to $50,000 in the second year. It also plans to offer dealers who sign up early four months of unlimited free trading.

Canada’s largest dealers typically pay between $12 million and $14 million a year in trading fees. With Pure Trading, they would py only $240,000 for unlimited trading in one year.

Launched in July 2003, CNQ already operates a stock exchange for micro-capitalization stocks, and currently 56 companies are listed on it.