Instrument Creation

The process customers use to request complex instruments is referred to as the Complex Instrument Creation (CIC) process.

FIX order entry supports two distinct styles of requests: short form and long form. The long form request requires the complete set of OSI symbol information for each leg to be specified on the FIX message. The short form requires two steps. First, the instrument must be created by submitting a security definition request, and then the resulting complex symbol id is used to submit the short form order message. BOE order entry only supports the short form. Refer to the US Options FIX and BOE Specifications for more details.

Any complex instrument created on the current trading day but not tied to a working GTC order will be purged at the end of that trading day. Any complex instrument previously associated with a GTC order but later results in no associated GTC orders will be purged at the end of the trading week (typically Friday evening).

Firms will be limited to creating 40,000 Complex instruments per trading day per underlying symbol on C1 and 25,000 per day per underlying symbol on BZX, C2, and EDGX. Once a firm has reached the CIC limit for a symbol they will begin receiving rejects for Security Definition Request messages; A: Exceeds firm CIC limit. This will only impact the creation of new complex instruments. An order on an existing complex symbol will not count towards the limit nor will firms who have breached the limit be rejected when entering new orders on existing complex instruments.