Pipeline Trading Systems LLC operated private

equities Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion t ...

and options trading systems from 2004 to 2012. As an agency broker, it offered equities traders two methods for trading large blocks of stock with minimal impact on price: a crossing network (also known as a

dark pool In finance, a dark pool (also black pool) is a private forum ( alternative trading system or ATS) for trading securities, derivatives, and other financial instruments.Securities and Exchange Commission The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...

regarding the disclosure of the activities of its liquidity providing affiliate between 2004 and 2010.DailyFinance (Pipeline press release
"Study Reveals Buy Side Firms Entrust Most Difficult Trades to Pipeline"
April 7, 2011. The affiliate implemented a patented market structure invention that used an execution quality rebate to align the liquidity provider's incentives with those of Pipeline's institutional clients. The crossing system earned high marks for execution quality in third party research, but was shut down in 2012 following the SEC action. Pipeline was founded by

Fred Federspiel Fred Federspiel is an American technology entrepreneur, nuclear physicist and inventor. Biography Born in West Lafayette Indiana in 1963, Federspiel earned a PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Cha ...

, a nuclear physicist and complexity scientist, and Alfred Berkeley, a former president and vice chairman of

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

. Following its settlement in 2011, the company rebranded itself in January 2012 and now operates as Aritas Securities LLC.{{cite web, title=Company Overview of Aritas Securities LLC, url=https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=8910360, website=Bloomberg, accessdate=28 February 2015

References

Defunct financial services companies of the United States