(Bloomberg) -- A group of nine fund managers is planning to start a dark pool dedicated to large stock trades later this year, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The new market -- named Luminex -- will admit asset managers who bet on prices to increase, said a person familiar with the initiative who asked not to be identified because the project hasn’t been made public. Fidelity Investments began to discuss setting up the dark pool more than a year ago, the person said.
The other members of the group are Bank of New York Mellon, BlackRock, Capital Group, Invesco, JPMorgan Asset Management, MFS Investment Management, State Street Global Advisors and T Rowe Price Group, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the project. Fidelity, BlackRock and JPMorgan declined to comment. Spokesmen for the other firms didn’t immediately respond to calls seeking comment.
Dark pools are private trading venues where investors can buy and sell shares without making their orders visible to the rest of the market. Dark venues were originally set up to handle large block trades, but the size of the orders they process has fallen in recent years.
Luminex is not the first trading venue to be set up by investors. IEX Group Inc., made famous by Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys” book, is owned by a consortium including hedge funds and mutual funds. It opened for business on Oct. 25, 2013, and its share of total U.S. equity trading hit 1 percent in November.
