Wanted to highlight three significant pieces in the current Securities Industry News and/or its Web site, SecuritiesIndustry.com, about three significant developments at NYSE Euronext on the options, bonds and technology sides. (Both the print version and the Web site are subscriber-only; the site does offer some articles on a free-registration basis.)

NYSE Readies MatchPoint; Reports Record Volumes~FlexTrade EMS will provide access to point-in-time trading facility (no link available) Excerpt:

NYSE expects to begin accepting orders on Jan. 22 for its MatchPoint after-hours cross, at 4:45 p.m., which will differ from competitors’ point-in-time matching facilities by allowing member firms to enter portfolio-based orders that will also interact with large individual block orders. By the end of the first quarter, the exchange anticipates rolling out intraday crosses starting at 9:45 and proceeding on the hour throughout the day.

MatchPoint’s introduction precedes that of NYSE’s yet-to-be-named joint venture with the Bids alternative trading system (ATS), a dark book owned by a consortium of large Wall Street firms. That initiative will provide market participants with the ability to match large orders anonymously, much like Bids’ current offering, as well as interact with NYSE’s publicly displayed book. It is expected to start up by midyear.

“By offering MatchPoint and our recently announced joint venture with Bids, we’re providing investors two new, complementary ways to trade block orders,” said Lawrence Leibowitz, head of U.S. products, in a statement.

Aside: speaking of MatchPoint, our marketing team just sent out a reminder to the industry about the Jan. 22 launch. Are you ready? If not, here are two links with information and required forms, respectively, or contact your relationship manager or the MatchPoint team.

Arca Options, ‘Market-Structure Leader’ Excerpt:

Introduced in August 2006, NYSE Arca Options has been a major beneficiary of the options market’s steadily rising volumes. Based on the all-electronic equities platform that NYSE Euronext acquired with Archipelago Holdings in March 2006, NYSE Arca’s share of daily transaction volume was at 16.3 percent last month, up from 14.6 percent in December 2006. It typically ranks third in options market share, behind the International Securities Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange.

“NYSE Arca was the fastest-growing U.S. equity options exchange in 2007, with a 60 percent growth rate, compared to the industry average of 30 percent,” notes NYSE Arca Options VP Edward Boyle. “We have plans in place for 2008 to leverage that momentum by implementing new functionalities, new products and order types, and continuing to attract new participants.”

NYSE Euronext Signs $200 Million Deal for Wombat (By Alexa Jaworski — she’s back!) — Excerpt:

Wombat has “grown tremendously over the last three or four years, and it was clear that there was an opportunity to get our core technologies in front of a much broader set of customers,” said Wombat chief executive Danny Moore in an interview. “Customers were feeling a lot of pressure around things like total cost of ownership in light of exponentially increasing data volumes. We were looking for strategies that would allow us to deliver bigger solutions but in doing so bring down the total cost of ownership.”

Wombat, which was founded in 1997, has 140 employees and offices in Incline Village, Nev., Chicago, London, Belfast and Tokyo. The company says it has more than 100 global customers, including the world’s 12 largest financial firms. It had $28 million in revenues last year, up 124 percent from 2006.

Moore emphasized that Wombat will remain “intact and highly productive” and “will continue to be a very aggressive technology company.”

Have a groovy Tuesday. Mining a little history, On This Day (NYTimes.com):

– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was born in 1929. We close the market next Monday — the national holiday — in honor of the great man.

– In 1967, the Green Bay Packers won the first Super Bowl, beating the Kansas City Chiefs, 34-10. I was a kid at the time and the Pack always seemed to win and seemed so iconic — Bart Starr, Ray Nitschke, Vince Lombardi — that I became a lifelong Packer fan. May they do it again this year.

– Speaking of icons, different field: the great jazz drummer Gene Krupa (1909-1973) also was born today.

Hello Options People!

It has been an exciting year for us at NYSE Arca Options. From January through November of 2007, we have seen our market share in the penny pilot names increase by nearly 10%, our monthly average volume reaching the 2 million contracts a day range in November–and upwards of 75% of those contracts executed on our blazingly fast electronic options platform!

NYSE Arca Options’ market makers and all of our customers have helped drive market share to 14 .6% for equity options (making us the number three exchange in November 2007) and from 8% (pre-pilot) to 17.6% in Penny Pilot names. We are the fastest growing US equity options exchange with a 60% growth rate in 2007, compared to the industry average of 30%. Our market share in individual penny pilot names continues to accelerate as well, with more than 20% of options volume in the QQQQs coming to NYSE Arca. In anticipation of increased industry volumes and our own growing market share, we’ve increased our throughput this year as well, positioned to handle up to 60,000 orders per second , and our quote capacity is simply enormous–we are well ahead of the curve with 1 million–let’s say that together–1 MILLION quotes per second.

Additionally, here’s a good snapshot of how effective our quote mitigation plan has proven to be: from May to September 2007 we saved 19.5 million quotes, i.e. the equivalent of 15% of NYSE Arca quote traffic, with over 34,000 series mitigated every day.

2007 also saw the addition 10 new Order Flow Providers and 11 new Market Makers to the NYSE Arca Options community. Our post/take pricing model in the penny names has made quoting on NYSE Arca Options a very attractive proposition for market making firms, and the added liquidity and tighter spreads this robust competition from quoters has put us at the NBBO more often than any other exchange, attracting order flow providers to the national best price–right here on NYSE Arca!

So that’s a look back, which is a satisfying thing to do at the end of a year like 2007, but more exciting is what lies ahead. What we can look forward to in 2008 includes another expansion of the penny pilot in March, bringing approximately 60% of all industry volume into the pilot. Here at NYSE Arca we are ready to rock! Our increased throughput and capacity planning in 2007 makes us well placed to continue to offer all the speed and reliability for which we are justly noted in the industry. Our motto is “YES PENNIES! Flat, open and transparent!!!”

Aside from the expansion of the penny pilot, we’ve been busy cooking up a complex order book that will launch late Q1 of 2008, bringing you the ability to execute orders with up to 5 legs, and that includes an equity leg. Because of the liquidity available on our options and our equities platforms, we will not only offer complex to complex order transactions but also legging into our liquidity pools for riskless option/equity transactions along with risk free option only complex trades. This is good stuff–watch this space for more details in the next month or so, when I will take you under the hood and discuss the particulars of how this new functionality is going to work.

We’ve got a lot more up our sleeve for 2008, and it promises to be another stellar year for our quoting and order flow community here at NYSE Arca Options, so keep checking back! If you’re on board, huzzah! If you are thinking of joining the fun, now is the time! A great New Year’s Resolution–NYSE Arca Options!!!!