🔴 Top Stories
IEX is setting up the first fee schedule for its new IEX Options facility, launching October 2, 2026. It covers trading permits ($1,000 for order entry and clearing firms; $5,000–$13,000 for market makers), 'premium product' fees on SPY, QQQ, IWM, NVDA, TSLA, AAPL and AMZN, connectivity and port fees, and Options TOPS/DEEP market data fees. It also offers 100% discounts for the first three months and 50% for months four through six, and deliberately prices below most options competitors (e.g., $11,700 for full market-maker coverage versus $33,000 on NYSE American). The filing took effect immediately on filing, so no SEC approval was needed; the SEC can still suspend it within 60 days, but that is unlikely for fees benchmarked at or below peers. Transaction fees are left 'reserved' for a later filing, so the key pricing that will drive order flow is still to come.
IEX RELEVANT This is IEX's own go-to-market pricing for its options expansion, using aggressive launch discounts and below-competitor permit, port and data fees to attract the market makers and order flow needed to make IEX Options viable against incumbents like Cboe, Nasdaq, NYSE and MIAX.
🔵 IEX Competitive Intel
LTSE, which has never had a registered market maker, rewrote its market maker rules (modeled closely on Cboe BZX) to create an approval-based registration process, register individual market-making traders, assign market makers to specific securities, and add standard exceptions to the two-sided quoting obligation, so it can launch a market maker program in the non-LTSE-listed stocks it trades. Because it was filed for immediate effectiveness and the SEC waived the usual 30-day delay, the rules are already live and LTSE can start the program now (targeted October 1, 2026); the SEC could still suspend it within 60 days, but that is unlikely given it copies already-approved rules. LTSE also says a separate filing will add quoting incentives (payments) for market makers, which is the piece that could actually move liquidity.
IEX RELEVANT Signals that LTSE, a small exchange competing with IEX for order flow, is trying to build displayed liquidity through a market maker program and upcoming incentive payments, which IEX should watch as a possible small shift in where order flow goes.
Nadex (a CFTC-regulated futures exchange that just notice-registered with the SEC as a security futures exchange) is adopting rules to list perpetual, cash-settled single-stock futures on large-cap names like AAPL, NVDA and TSLA, each sized at one share (with fractional 0.01 trading). The contracts trade 24/5, have no expiry, and use crypto-style funding payments every eight hours to stay pegged to SIP and overnight-venue prices. This is a Section 19(b)(7) filing, so it takes effect once the CFTC approves it without SEC approval. The SEC can only abrogate it within 60 days and force a full refiling, which makes it likely to proceed and would give retail traders a leveraged, round-the-clock synthetic substitute for owning the underlying stocks.
IEX RELEVANT Crypto-style perpetual stock futures trading 24/5 on a futures venue could siphon retail and speculative flow away from cash equity exchanges like IEX, especially in overnight hours, while relying on SIP and overnight-venue prices it doesn't pay to create.
Nasdaq Texas (the former Nasdaq BX, renamed as part of Nasdaq's Texas push) is copying a set of Nasdaq listing rules so it can become a standalone primary listing exchange around Q2 2027. The rules cover direct listings, extra hurdles for China-based companies, a higher SPAC market-value minimum, and delisting power after SEC trading suspensions, and they drop the current requirement that its issuers also list on another exchange. The filing took effect on submission with no SEC approval needed, though the SEC can suspend it within 60 days; nothing changes in practice until Nasdaq announces the switch-on date and files a separate listing-fee schedule, after which issuers can list solely on Nasdaq Texas, adding a Nasdaq-owned rival to TXSE and NYSE Texas in the Texas listings race.
IEX RELEVANT Nasdaq is turning a second exchange license into a full primary listing venue, intensifying the Texas-based listings competition (Nasdaq Texas, NYSE Texas, TXSE), and IEX, which exited the listings business, will need to decide whether it stays out of that market.
MIAX Pearl Equities is updating its clearly erroneous execution rule so that trades executed within the newly approved LULD Overnight Price Bands (9 p.m.–4 a.m. ET) generally cannot be broken, mirroring how the rule already works during regular hours. Non-LULD securities such as rights and warrants would remain reviewable overnight using the extended-hours numerical guidelines. The filing takes effect immediately without SEC approval, though the SEC could suspend it within 60 days, which is unlikely. It is part of an identical industry-wide set of filings by all exchanges and FINRA, operative when 23/5 trading launches on December 6, 2026, giving participants certainty that overnight trades inside the bands will stand.
IEX RELEVANT IEX will need to file a conforming clearly erroneous rule change and align its overnight-session readiness with the industry-wide 23/5 framework ahead of the December 6, 2026 launch.
IEX is copying into its new IEX Options rulebook the industry-wide Options Listing Procedures Plan (OLPP) standards that limit which strike prices exchanges may list. These rules exist mainly to control quote traffic, and other options exchanges already have essentially identical rules. Because this is a routine, non-controversial conforming change, it took effect immediately, and the SEC waived the usual 30-day wait so it is in place before IEX Options launches on October 2, 2026; nothing changes for market participants beyond IEX Options following the same series-listing rules as every other options venue.
IEX RELEVANT This is a housekeeping step that clears IEX Options to launch on October 2, 2026 with series-listing rules identical to its competitors, so IEX Options will need to compete on factors other than which strikes it lists.
IEX is dropping the requirement for IEX Options to keep a standing roster of at least ten market-maker and ten non-market-maker representatives for its Obvious Error Panel, which hears appeals of decisions to bust or adjust options trades. Each panel will still have the CRO plus two market-maker and two non-market-maker representatives, and MEMX, MX2 and the Nasdaq options exchanges already follow a similar approach. The rule took effect immediately, and the SEC waived the usual 30-day wait so it applies from IEX Options' October 2, 2026 launch; it is administrative housekeeping with no effect on trading, error standards or member rights.
IEX RELEVANT This is IEX's own administrative cleanup timed to the IEX Options launch, cutting the operational burden of staffing the error-appeal process without any competitive impact on the equities business.