Brad Katsuyama, president and CEO of IEX Group Inc.
IEX Group, the two-year-old stock exchange known for putting a "speed bump" on trading, now has its first stock listing, as Interactive Brokers announces plans to move there from Nasdaq.
The stock will begin trading on IEX on Friday, Oct. 5, under the same ticker, IBKR.
Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers' founder and chairman, acknowledged in a statement Wednesday that being first to list on a relatively new exchange may have some risks, "but we think that individual and institutional customers who own and trade our stock will receive better execution prices and that advantage will outweigh the risk."
IEX was founded in 2012 and officially began operating as an exchange in 2016 with a stated goal of restoring equilibrium to a fragmented system of U.S. exchanges and trading sites that had become dominated by high-speed trading. Its speed bump, a brief delay in orders to trade stocks, was designed to foil traders that use high-speed computer programs to predict incremental market moves and quickly buy and sell shares before others can.
Controversial at first, speed bumps have proliferated among U.S. market sites, though they differ from IEX's to varying degrees.
Stock listings is another area of growth for markets. NYSE and Nasdaq had also come to dominate the listings business in the last decade, and IEX got approval last year to compete with them. This month, United Continental's stock began trading on Nasdaq after moving from NYSE, the ninth such move this year.
"A new choice means more competition, better value, lower prices and better service for companies," said IEX's CEO and co-founder Brad Katsuyama, in a separate statement on Wednesday.
IEX said last year it would pursue companies currently listed and would eventually look to attract initial public offerings.
Shares of Intercontinental Exchange, the parent of NYSE, traded down 0.2 percent in the premarket. Shares of Nasdaq were up 0.4 percent.
