An ATS is like an exchange, so we match buyers and sellers. And you guessed correctly that the initial users are institutional investors - or more directly their brokers. So initially we'll have institutions creating and sending in "Expressive Bids" to improve their execution performance, and to express trades they currently can't via plain limit orders.
That said, we'd love to get to the point where E-Trade etc. are offering combinatorial bidding to retail traders, with us on the back end.
That said, we'd love to get to the point where E-Trade etc. are offering combinatorial bidding to retail traders, with us on the back end.