Execution Quality in the NASDAQ Market

Electronic order books (EOBs) continue to dominate the NASDAQ market for the covered shares. The share of the leading EOBs, viz., Nasdaq MC, BATS Exchange, and EDGX, has gone up to 61% in 2010 from 44% in 2009, while the three leading market makers have only 14% market share.

In a new report, Execution Quality in the NASDAQ Market, Celent analyzes over 26 billion orders over the period of March 1, 2010 through May 31, 2010. In total, the report by Anshuman Jaswal, Senior Analyst with Celent’s Securities and Investments group, measures and ranks 155 market participants according to their execution speed and prices obtained for incoming orders.

Unlike last year, there is no clear leader with regard to both price and speed among the market centers. LeveL ATS, NYSE Arca, and BATS Exchange are the leading performers with regard to price. For speed, Nasdaq MC, BATS Exchange, EDGA Exchange, and NYSE Arca are the leading market centers. Hence, the EOBs seem to be better in terms of overall performance than the market centers.

Table 1 gives the best performers in the overall ranking of the market centers. Among the top market centers are Liquidnet (same as last year), LeveL ATS, and Wells Fargo Advisors. In terms of execution speed, Credit Suisse Securities, BATS Exchange, and Surge Trading were the top performers.

Table 1: Overall Ranking of Market Centers

Table 2 shows the rankings for the major electronic order books (EOBs). Last year, Nasdaq MC was the leading performer across the two categories, followed by BATS Exchange. However, in 2010, LeveL ATS and NYSE Arca are leading in the price rankings for the EOBs, and BATS Exchange, NYSE Arca, and EDGA are leading the speed rankings. Across both categories, NYSE Arca, BATS Exchange, and LeveL ATS are the best performers.

Table 2: Ranking the Major Electronic Order Books

Among the market makers, the best firms according to price were ATS, UBS Securities, and E*Trade Capital. In the speed rankings, the fastest are UBS Securities, E*Trade Capital, and Knight Equity. UBS Securities continues to be the best performer across the price and speed rankings. E*Trade Capital and ATD have also performed well.

Table 3: Ranking the Major Market Makers