NYSE and Amex have introduced their new Retail Liquidity Program that would produce cost savings for individual investors through price improvement on retail order flow.  The program is set to run as a pilot pending to SEC approval. Retail Orders ("ROs"). The program will offer a new pool of price improvement liquidity to Retail Member Organizations ("RMOs") who will be eligible to submit certain retail order flow, generally defined as unmodified agency orders that originate from a natural person, to the Exchange as a Retail Order. Retail orders are defined as:

• An agency order that originates from a natural person and is submitted to the Exchange by an Retail Member Organization, provided that no change is made to the terms of the order (e.g. side of market) and the order does not originate from a trading algorithm or any other computerized methodology; or

• A proprietary order of an RMO that results from liquidating a position acquired from the internalization of an order that satisfies the requirements of the preceding subparagraph.

Retail Orders will be treated as immediate or cancel and will be offered in 3 varieties:  (i) this type will interact solely with Retail Price Improvement (RPI) orders;  (ii) this type will interact with RPI orders and, once all RPI interest has been exhausted, any balance of the RO will execute against the NYSE or NYSE Amex non-RO book;  (iii) this type will add the ability to route to protected away market quotes as needed. Retail Price Improvement ("RPI") Orders. All member organizations will be eligible to submit RPI Orders in the form of non-displayed interest.  Additionally, a member organization may act as an intermediary on behalf of another broker-dealer who qualifies as a Retail Order provider. When RPI interest is priced better than the Protected Best Bid or Offer (PBBO) by a minimum of $0.001, an indication of interest will be published via the NYSE Alerts and NYSE Amex Alerts feeds and that interest will be eligible to interact with incoming RO interest. Firms will have the ability to enter RPI orders with a simple limit price, but will also have the ability to specify a new 'Price Improvement Offset' value. RPI orders submitted with this new offset value will automatically adjust their price to be better than the same side PBBO by the value specified, up to their limit price. Retail Liquidity Provider ("RLP"). Member Organizations that are currently approved as a DMM or as a Supplemental Liquidity Provider (SLP) will qualify as RLP’s, and will required to provide potential price improvement for Retail Orders in the form of non-displayed interest that is better than the PBBO.  Similar to the Exchanges' other dedicated liquidity provider programs, RLPs would receive certain economic benefits in exchange for meeting certain performance obligations. For further details regarding the definitions and terms involved, please see this C-I story on Rule 107C.   For more information concerning qualifications for member organizations, please see  [NYSE Trader Updates, 10/25/11]