Maximize Liquidity, Minimize Remorse

Symbol rollouts are tentatively planned for the following dates:

·      First Tranche: Friday, October 2

·      Second Tranche: Friday, October 9

·      Third Tranche: Thursday, October 15

·      Fourth Tranche: Friday, October 23

·      Fifth Tranche: Thursday, October 27

·      Sixth Tranche: Friday, October 30

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Weekend testing dates leading up to launch are currently scheduled accordingly:

·      Test 1: Saturday, August 15

·      Test 2: Saturday, August 29

·      Final Confidence Test: Saturday, September 19

IEX Options will offer an optional risk tool called the Options Risk Parameter (ORP), designed to mitigate the impact of latency arbitrage on Market Maker quotes. The ORP will operate by a fixed formula disclosed transparently in IEX’s rules and related Trading Alerts. The ORP is designed to enable Market Makers to provide tighter and deeper quotes on IEX by providing protection from execution against quotes at stale prices by identifying when the best Protected Bid or best Protected Offer of the Away Markets (as defined in Rule 22.160(a)(8)) in a particular options series is sufficiently dislocated from the price of the underlying security to indicate that the best Protected Bid or best Protected Offer of the Away Markets in the options series is likely in transition.

If a quote instability determination is generated for an options series quoted by a Market Maker and the quote is above (below) the price level of the quote instability determination, the quote will be either cancelled or repriced to the price level of the quote instability determination (as instructed by the Market Maker) in advance on its quote. IEX expects that Market Makers will elect to use the ORP to manage risks for quotes in some underlying instruments and series, but not necessarily all, based on their relevant risk and based on their experience with the ORP, as they do with other commonly used risk-based controls.

IEX Options will utilize a Customer Priority, pro-rata allocation model for all options available for trading on IEX Options. Specialist and Directed Market Maker Participation Entitlements will additionally be offered (see our full FAQs for more detail). The IEX Options commercial model and associated fee schedule will be announced at a later date.

IEX Options’ Production environment will be in the NY3 Equinix facility in Secaucus, NJ. IEX Options’ Disaster Recovery environment will be in the CH4 Equinix facility in Chicago, Illinois. IEX Options additionally intends to offer latency-equalized connectivity to the Production environment from the NY3, NY4, NY5, and NY6 data centers.