Tradeweb Markets has launched the Tradeweb US options platform for institutional customer-to-dealer trading.
Designed to improve efficiency and access to liquidity in the surging US options market, the Tradeweb US equity options platform allows institutional investors to directly source full-size price quotes from multiple market makers using the request for quote (RFQ) protocol.
The RFQ was pioneered by Tradeweb in the fixed income cash and derivatives markets as well as exchange-traded fund (ETF) markets.
By introducing its RFQ protocol to the US options market, Tradeweb now allows institutional investors to send simultaneous electronic price requests to multiple liquidity providers which creates more aggressive pricing and tighter spreads while eliminating the need to call individual dealers or work across multiple exchanges for pricing and execution for large trades.
The new platform offers RFQ trading of multi-leg options strategies on all US-listed single stocks, ETFs, and equity indices.
Currently, nine liquidity providers, a mix of banks and proprietary trading firms (PTFs) are live on the platform.
Tradeweb has also announced the future launch of RFQ trading for single stocks in Europe in association with the Plato Partnership.
Adam Gould, head of US equities at Tradeweb, said: "Our institutional ETF trading platforms were an important step in enabling buy-side institutions to access to better pricing and size for block ETF trades.”
He added: “We've now expanded the Tradeweb RFQ model to US options in direct response to clients who want the same value they experience executing ETFs on Tradeweb applied to options.”
“Just as we've seen on our ETF platform, we expect our new options offering to drive better pricing for clients, while also streamlining their workflow and demonstrating best execution."
.jpg)