IEX sets new standards by raising the bar for performance, fairness, and transparency.
Our Story
The IEX Mission: Inspire fairness and innovation by creating technology that levels the playing field.
The Investors Exchange
While working at the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), the global electronic trading team led by Brad Katsuyama, Ronan Ryan, John Schwall, and Rob Park discovered that the stock exchanges were enabling predatory trading strategies that were harming long-term investors representing the savings of millions of people.
Ultimately, the team decided that the best way to change the system was to build a new exchange from scratch that would put the interests of investors first: The Investors Exchange.
IEX debuted as an Alternative Trading System in 2013, and then launched The Investors Exchange as a national stock exchange for U.S. equities in 2016. The story behind the founding of IEX was chronicled in Michael Lewis’ 2014 book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt.
Since its introduction, IEX has developed and introduced innovations that aim to level the playing field and offer superior performance for all market participants, whether that’s through IEX’s “speed bump,” which is designed to ensure that the exchange executes trades at the right price, or the IEX Signal (i.e., Crumbling Quote Indicator), a machine learning-based signal that aims to protect investors from trading while prices are unstable.
A Growing Exchange
IEX has also set a new standard for transparency in the market, starting with the first-of-its-kind publication of its Form ATS – making public the rules of how trading would work on IEX (the SEC now requires that all Form ATSs be public).
Since then, IEX has spoken out publicly on key market structure issues, from market data to exchange rebates to predatory order types and provided an unprecedented level of transparency into its own operations (for instance through its groundbreaking “Cost of Exchange Services” report).
Beyond the Exchange
Since its debut, the standards set by IEX have attracted new opportunities: new ways to use IEX’s technology to improve performance and inspire innovation, new arenas where IEX’s commitment to fairness and transparency can make a difference, and new requests from clients for IEX to level the playing field.
Our Businesses
IEX evaluates every new opportunity based on whether it is a chance to set new standards.
We believe that each of the businesses we operate – including The Investors Exchange and non-Exchange businesses – contributes to this effort to raise the bar for performance, fairness and transparency.
It’s setting a new standard for trading.
It’s setting a new standard for the easy delivery and use of financial data.
It’s setting a new standard for clear, reliable, and useful data.
Additional Affiliations
IEX CEO Brad Katsuyama is a member of the Task Force, which was created to harness the power of digital financing for the good of the planet and its citizens. Through this engagement, IEX collaborates with the UN and other partners to generate ideas for sustainable financing of the SDGs.
IEX is a paying Working Group member of the coalition.
IEX provided a seed loan to Babelfish with no ownership stake.
Our Team
At IEX, we know that achieving our mission begins with the standards we set for ourselves.