Themis Trading, LLC Joins The Fight Against ALS on Block Day, 10/15

ALS, WOWS, IEX, and Themis Trading

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a very debilitating muscular disease that typically strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70. Approximately 20,000 Americans have the disease at any given time, and notable public figures that have been diagnosed with ALS include Lou Gehrig, Catfish Hunter, and Senator Jacob Javitz. Dear friends of ours have also been affected, including IEX’s John Schwall, whose dear mother Marilyn passed away from ALS in 2008.

Awareness for ALS took off globally in 2014 with the Ice Bucket Challenge. Our ALS nominating circle even brought together High Frequency Market Makers (Remco Lenterman and Virtu’s Doug Cifu), buyside heads of desks (T Rowe’s Clive Williams), Agency Brokerage firm founders (Themis’s Sal Arnuk), Exchange Operators (the IEX crew), and even Authors (Flash Boys author Michael Lewis). The global ALS Ice Bucket Challenge campaign raised over $70 million in 2014 for ALS research.

This year IEX is holding a Block Day on October 15^th.

They will donate revenues from all block trades to Wings over Wall Street (WOWS). To promote IEX Block Day and to rally street support, CNBC’s Jon “DRJ” Najarian will be broadcasting live from the IEX floor.

We want to help IEX and WOWS raise money on Block Day.

On October 15^th Themis Trading will additionally donate all our net commissions from our non-routable IEX trades we execute[i].

We ask your help. Partner with all of us! On October 15^th won’t you make a special effort to trade with Themis, and send us orders to specifically rest on IEX?  We believe IEX is a fantastic venue that aids us in achieving best execution, and we are happy to interact with them in any manner of your choosing. We are one of the few high touch brokers who not only touch IEX algorithmically, but actually rest significant amounts of our clients’ order flow on IEX, and do so routinely, and additionally case by case at our customers’ request.

Help us make IEX Block Day a success. Help us help WOWS. And help us swing big and donate large to continue research and awareness for the very debilitating ALS.

[1] For example, if we trade 2,000,000 shares on IEX on October 15^th, assuming a $0.02 commission less 9 mils, our donation will amount to about $38,000. If we trade double that, then that donation will be about $76,000. And if we trade 10,000 shares on IEX on October 15^th, our donation will be $191.