Instinet and Potential Buyers -

Today's speculatory news was chock-full of banter about Instinet's hiring UBS to find a buyer for the company. While most guessed that logical buyers would include AX, NITE, and/or NASDAQ, there's value to looking at history.

In June of 2003, The Philadelphia Exchange was interested in joining the Pacific Exchange/AX. Jerry Putnam and the other geniuses that run the ARCA show said thanks but no thanks. Here's a snippet of that story: http://tinyurl.com/4m3nz
And, in 2002, the Cincinnatti Exchange really started to show progress in taking market share from NASDAQ. Today's speculatory news didn't mention the CINCY Exchange as a potential buyer of INGP, but that might make some sense. Here's that story from 2002: http://tinyurl.com/5xufk

Either way, INGP's going away should dramatically help AX as it consolidates this industry. Naturally, this should increase ARCA volume. Not to mention, while INGP is on the auction block, we may see volume move from INGP to ARCAEX.