Execution: Reference Prices
The reference price
behind every fairEx ticket.
liveMid is the real-time independent mid-price that drives fairEx routing decisions and price-protection thresholds.
How liveMid fits into Execution
Routing and price protection in one price.
fairEx uses liveMid as its real-time reference at every stage of the execution workflow. Before a routing decision is made, liveMid anchors the price-protection threshold, execution only proceeds if the available price is within a defined number of ticks of liveMid. This protects clients against giving up yield to dealer spreads or transient liquidity gaps.
The same price that routes the order also evidences it: liveMid at execution time is logged in the best-execution audit trail. Post-trade, TCA is benchmarked against fairMid, the ex-post fair-value measure.
Price protection
fairEx prevents bad execution: if the best available price is outside the liveMid tolerance, the order does not proceed, so clients are protected from temporary liquidity gaps and wide dealer spreads.
FAIREX · ROUTING
Best-ex benchmark
liveMid at the moment of execution is logged natively alongside every routing decision. Post-trade, fairMid, the ex-post fair-value measure, keeps updating as more market context arrives, and is the benchmark each fill is ultimately measured against.
AUDIT · TCA
liveMid vs fairMid
liveMid for pre-trade
A real-time independent mid. The price streams at the leading edge: the reference you price against, route on, and protect against before you trade.
fairMid for post-trade
An independent fair value that never stops improving. As post-trade prints land, the whole history is re-estimated: the benchmark each fill is ultimately measured against.