FAQ

Luminex operates as an SEC-registered alternative trading system (ATS). Designed to provide buy-side institutional investors with more efficient trading of large blocks of shares, Luminex is a completely anonymous, non-quoted trading venue that helps subscribers source liquidity and reduce market impact.

Luminex was approved as a FINRA member on December 26, 2014. The firm launched trading on November 3, 2015.

Luminex was created for the buy-side by the buy-side, without any profit motivation. Luminex seeks to create a trading venue that satisfies the liquidity needs of buy-side firms and prevent the main challenges of dark pools, such as intermediation, fragmentation, fall downs, information leakage, and concerns around ownership and control of trade data.

As a consortium, Luminex seeks to achieve credibility and trust with the buy-side. The consortium’s buy-side governance and avoidance of a profit motivation remove the key conflicts trading venues have today.

Our owners include 9 of the largest and most trusted investment management firms in the world: BlackRock, BNY Mellon, The Capital Group, Fidelity Investments, Invesco Advisers, Inc., J.P. Morgan Asset Management, MFS Investment Management, State Street Global Advisors, and T.Rowe Price.

Luminex is a FIX destination. It is integrated into several Order Management Systems and can also be accessed via Service Bureaus.

Luminex intends to runs as close to break-even as possible while remaining financially sound and self-sustaining. The goal of Luminex is to minimize the explicit and implicit costs of trading.

No

Learn how Luminex trading works here.

Yes. The system determines a minimum acceptable size based on easily understood liquidity parameters. Each trader is able to override the system default and request a higher minimum execution quantity.

For orders that execute immediately, the Luminex execution price is the midpoint of the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) at the time of the execution. For orders that execute following a negotiation, the Luminex execution price is a front-weighted average of a series of midpoint prices sampled once each second over the negotiation window, plus two additional seconds after the block size has been determined. The weighted execution price assigns lower weight to later prices in order to reduce the execution’s susceptibility to price manipulation.

Luminex has no routing capabilities. Client orders sent to Luminex can only trade within Luminex.

NMS securities trade on Luminex.

Luminex supports firm and negotiable orders. A negotiable order has a firm portion that can be locked in to trade without further prompting (the Auto Execution Quantity) and a negotiable portion that requires a trader’s confirmation before being executed (the Negotiable Quantity), which together sum to the order’s Top Quantity. A firm order is simply a negotiable order with zero Negotiable Quantity. Learn how Luminex trading works here.

The system accepts orders from 7:15  am ET to 4:00 pm ET, and executes orders from 9:30 am ET to 4:00 pm ET.

Please contact us at: 844-Luminex (844-586-4639)

Definitions

Block Liquidity – as referenced, refers to the ability of institutional traders to identify and trade large orders of a particular equity.

Fall Downs – fall downs occur when a counter-party engages in a trade negotiation and then backs away after capturing trade data and the intent of the offering party.

Hybrid Order – requires trader to commit to a minimum block quantity order, plus provides the option to negotiate for increased order size.

Buy-side Firm – Institutional Investors such as mutual funds, pension funds, insurance firms, that tend to buy large portions of securities (blocks), for money management purposes.

NBBO – National Best Bid and Offer – The best (lowest) available ask price and the best (highest) available bid price to investors when they buy and sell securities. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation NMS requires that brokers must guarantee customers this price.

Corporate Offices
Luminex Trading & Analytics LLC
21 Custom House Street
Suite 100
Boston, MA 02110
Learn More / Trade With Us:
844-Luminex (844-586-4639)
sales@luminextrading.com
Press / Media:
914-522-9471
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© 2021 Luminex Trading & Analytics LLC Member FINRA / SIPC

Luminex® is a trading venue owned and operated by Luminex Trading & Analytics. It is open to institutional investment managers who seek to trade large blocks of stock with other institutional investment managers.

Luminex seeks to provide institutional investors that use the venue the ability to transact with one another in a lower-cost trading environment creating an opportunity to pass along those lower costs to their clients in the form of potential improvements in portfolio performance. Performance improvement is not guaranteed.

Luminex® is a registered service mark of Luminex Trading & Analytics LLC.