FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                     2000-18
                                
   SEC Issues Options Markets Linkage Plans for Public Comment
                                
     Washington, DC, February 24, 2000 -- The Securities and
Exchange Commission today issued for public comment the three
intermarket linkage plans filed on January 19, 2000 by the
options exchanges.  The evolution of the options industry, and
particularly the recent increase in multiple listing, underscores
the immediate need for linkage among the options markets.  The
comment period will last for 30 days following publication in the
Federal Register.

     The linkage plans filed by the options exchanges reflect
agreement on a number of important issues.  Consensus was not
achieved, however, on the issues of price/time priority and
access to the linkage.  As a result, the Commission received
three distinct linkage plans:  one agreed to by the American
Stock Exchange and Chicago Board Options Exchange, and individual
plans submitted by the Pacific Exchange and the Philadelphia
Stock Exchange.  The International Securities Exchange, which the
Commission approved as a national securities exchange today,
submitted a plan identical to that filed by Amex and CBOE.

     Price/Time Priority:  The plans submitted by the options
markets differed on whether the options market linkage plan
should require intermarket price/time priority.  The plan filed
by the Amex, CBOE, and ISE would allow an exchange receiving an
order to match a better price that was displayed at another
market.  In other words, there would be no intermarket price/time
priority.

  *  The plan filed by the Phlx would impose a strict price/time
     priority requirement.  Under this plan, even if an exchange
     receiving an order is quoting at the national best bid or offer
     (NBBO), it would not trade with that order unless it were the
     market that first displayed the best price.  Instead, it would
     have to route the order to the market with price/time priority.

  *  The plan filed by the PCX would permit an exchange quoting
     at the NBBO, but not first in time, to either route the order to
     the market that was at the NBBO first, or execute the order at a
     price better than the NBBO.

  *  The Commission also requests comment on a customer limit
     order protection requirement, which was suggested by the ISE.
     Under this proposal, if a market executed an order by matching
     the best bid or offer, the market would have to satisfy customer
     limit orders at the best bid or offer displayed on another
     market, if that other market complains.

     The issues raised by the concepts of price/time priority and
customer limit order protection are more fully explored, and
public comment requested, in the Commission's release, published
yesterday, giving notice of the rescission of NYSE's Rule 390 and
requesting comment on market fragmentation.


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