About omega ATS

An overview of Omega ATS

Omega ATS is a fully automated transparent marketplace for trading listed Canadian equities and fixed income securities, offering both visible and hidden order types and subject to an inverted pricing model. 

For detailed information on order types and trading functionality, see the Functionality Guide available via the below link. 

 

A summary of order types and trading functionality is provided below.

ORDER TYPES

LIMIT ORDERS

Limit orders are executed at the price (or better) specified in the order. All orders adding liquidity are placed in the book at the price specified in the order.

Iceberg

Iceberg orders allow subscribers to only expose a portion of their order for display. The minimum displayed portion is one board lot.

HIDDEN MID-POINT PEGS

Mid-point peg orders are fully hidden orders that are pegged to the mid-point of the Protected National Best Bid and Offer (Protected NBBO).

INTENTIONAL CROSSES

The following cross types are supported: intentional, internal, derivatives, bypass, and special settlement terms.  Crosses entered on Omega ATS are not subject to interference from resting booked orders.

DAY ORDERS

Day orders remain eligible to trade for the duration of the trading day, unless cancelled by the subscriber.  Subscribers with open orders at end of day will receive “done for day” messages indicating that the orders have been cancelled.

Immediate or Cancel

An Immediate or Cancel order will trade immediately upon entry up to its specified limit price and quantity, and any unfilled balance will be cancelled.

Fill or Kill

If the order cannot be completely filled immediately upon entry, the entire order is cancelled.

All or None

All-or-None orders are accepted, but will be treated as Fill or Kill.

FEATURES

Attribution

All orders entered to Omega ATS are defaulted to be anonymous, unless the subscriber has specified that the order be attributed. 

Post Only

Subscribers can specify that their order only be ‘posted’ to the order book. Orders marked as Post Only are not eligible to remove liquidity from the order book upon entry.  If an order marked Post Only is immediately executable upon entry (i.e., it can remove liquidity from the order book), it will be rejected.

Bypass

Orders marked as bypass will only trade against resting displayed liquidity, and will bypass any hidden liquidity. Bypass orders must also be marked as Immediate or Cancel.

SELF-TRADE PREVENTION

Omega ATS offers the ability for subscribers to manage the risk of unintentional wash trades. The following self-trade prevention options are available to subscribers: “Trade and Suppress”, “Cancel and Decrement”, “Cancel Newest” and “Cancel Oldest”.

ORDER PROTECTION

Subscribers can manage compliance with order protection requirements to prevent trade-throughs and avoid locking or crossing with best-priced displayed orders on protected marketplaces.

Subscribers will specify the default order protection handling to apply to orders at the session level, which can be overridden by the subscriber where order protection handling is specified on a particular order. Subscribers can choose to use the “OPR Re-price” or “OPR Cancel” features, or will otherwise identify the order as a “Directed Action Order”, indicating that the subscriber has already checked displayed prices on all other protected markets and is taking responsibility for order protection.

Cancel on Disconnect

Subscribers will specify whether to enable “cancel on disconnect” for new order entry sessions. Where enabled, and a subscriber’s FIX order entry session is disconnected, all open orders associated with the session will be cancelled.

 

Marketplace Information

TRADING HOURS

Trading hours on Omega ATS are 8:00am to 5:00pm (Eastern Time), Monday through Friday, other than on holidays where Canadian listing markets are scheduled to be closed.

MATCHING PRIORITY

Matching for resting orders on Omega ATS follows price / broker / time priority.  

A better-priced order will always have priority.  Where there are multiple orders at the same price, orders from the same subscriber are executed first according to time priority (where both sides are attributed, and neither side is marked as jitney), followed by all other booked orders according to time.

TRADING INCREMENTS

Orders priced below $0.50 can be entered with, and will be displayed and traded in, half-penny increments.  Orders priced at or above $0.50 are entered, displayed and traded in full penny increments. 

BOARD LOT AND ODD LOT TRADING

Omega ATS supports trading in both round board lot and odd lots.  Board lot sizes are determined based on the previous day’s closing price on the listing exchange and adhere to the following conventions:

CLOSING PRICE BOARD LOT SIZE
$1.00 and over 100 shares
At least $0.10 and less than $1.00 500 shares
Under $0.10 1,000 shares
Debentures $1,000 face value

Orders entered in odd lot size trade separately from board lot sized orders, and only trade against other odd lot sized orders.  Received mixed lot orders will be separated into their respective board lot and odd lot portions and sent to the applicable board lot and odd lot order books.

Market Regulation

The Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (“CIRO”) has been retained by Tradelogiq to act as the regulation services provider for Omega ATS, and conducts market surveillance to ensure that trading is carried out in accordance with UMIR and other CIRO rules.  Streaming data of Omega ATS order and trade information is provided to CIRO to facilitate its real-time surveillance activities. 

Trading halts or suspensions for regulatory purposes are imposed by CIRO, and CIRO will determine the timing for the resumption of trading. 

CIRO is also responsible for the triggering of market-wide and single stock circuit breakers.

When a trading halt or circuit breaker is implemented, all open orders on Omega ATS for the affected securities are cancelled.