Investment Technology Group (ITG) has launched its Match Now dark book for Canadian equities.

Through its TriAct Canada Marketplace subsidiary, ITG’s Match Now allows traders to submit either passive orders to stay in the dark liquidity pool or a streaming liquidity order to pass through Match Now and then route out to the Toronto Stock Exchange or other public marketplace.

Match Now executions occur inside the Canadian bid-offer spread. “Dark liquidity is a relatively new concept in Canada,” says Wendy Rudd, CEO of TriAct. “Many traders are familiar with the market developments in the U.S. but haven’t had many dark books to chose from until recently.”

Rudd says that Match Now is a broker-neutral system with access open to all Canadian broker-dealers and their clients. Those clients can access the pool through the sponsorship of the participating broker-dealer. “Access is integrated into the existing trading process at the dealer level and the client level,” Rudd explains.

She adds that any ITG customer in the U.S. can also access Match Now from any of the ITG products they might use, such as the Triton execution management system (EMS).

While dark liquidity is just catching on in Canada, Rudd says, “We’ve seen real change and an increase in the comfort level and familiarity with dark pools as we’ve brought our product to market. I expect dark liquidity will show significant growth over the next few years in Canada as it is in the U.S.”