Patent ID: 8392320

Claim:
An options market center which lists a plurality of options series and routes orders to away market centers, comprising: an order book for each option series and a market maker quote book for each option series which are maintained by an order matching engine, intermarket linkages and direct connections to a plurality of away market centers, and at least one configurable routing table including a set of routing rules; an away market best bid and offer book that is separate from the order book and the market maker quote book and is maintained by an away market quote engine; an interface for receiving orders, an interface for receiving quotes and an interface for receiving a top-of-book best bid and offer disseminated quotation from a plurality of away market centers for each option series; a market center memory for storing code for analyzing and processing orders and quotes; a processor for interacting with the interfaces and the engines and executing the code for analyzing and processing quotes and orders, wherein the code, when executed: the interface for receiving a top-of-book best bid and offer disseminated quotation receives an away market quote from an away market center for a specified option series on the market center; the away market quote engine analyzes the received quote to determine whether the away market quote has moved away from the price of an order on the opposite side of the order book that it previously touched; wherein responsive to determining that the away market quote has moved away from the price of an order on the opposite side of the order book that it previously touched, the quote engine notifies the order matching engine; and the order matching engine then evaluates dark orders on the order book to determine whether any of the dark orders can now be displayed; evaluates whether queued market orders can now be routed; and evaluates whether the disseminated best contra-side quotation is now eligible to receive additional routed orders.