John At The Center

Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse were way ahead of their peers in recognizing the potential of developing their electronic reserves of anonymous orders, or dark pools, to divert business from exchange floors and electronic stock markets. In terms of volume, they dominate the growing dark-pool area.

In June, Goldman’s Sigma X had a 26% market share among dark pools and alternative trading systems, according to Tabb Group’s Liquidity Matrix, with Credit Suisse’s CrossFinder second at 16%. None of the roughly 40 other dark pools come close; the next largest is Knight Capital Group’s 9% slice of the pie.