Trading: Banks swim in dark pools

Hope to improve prices and minimize fees and impact on market.

In May, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS announced bilateral agreements to offer reciprocal access for algorithmic trades to each other’s “dark pools”.

Dark pools are matching engines for non-displayed, anonymous trading away from the public markets.

The arrangements, which apply to US stocks only, connect three of the largest investment bank-operated dark liquidity pools in the US – Goldman Sachs’s Sigma X, Morgan Stanley’s MS Pool and UBS’s Pin ATS – but stops short of full integration.

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