(21 November 2011 – Australia) The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) entered into a content sharing agreement with the United States Options Industry Council (OIC) last week.The OIC is the premier body in the US created to educate investors and financial advisers about the benefits and risks of exchange-traded equity options.
The agreement makes the OIC’s world-class research available to a local audience. ASX will provide OIC institutional equity options white papers on the ASX website alongside its own Australian-focused research material.
The benefits of the content sharing agreement are already evident, with ASX replicating the OIC’s quant study on the collar strategy over the NASDAQ 100 index for an examination of the same trading strategy over the S&P/ASX 200 index using XJO options.
The agreement with OIC is the latest in a series of enhancements ASX has made to the equity options market to improve the market’s accessibility to investors and stimulate liquidity.
Other actions include reducing the contract size from 1000 to 100 shares per contract; and increasing the quoting requirements for market makers to generate greater price discovery for customers.