Electronic Trading

SENTRA®-DERIVADOS Trading. On September the 30th 1999, the Board of Directors of MexDer approved the project to create an electronic trading system. The decision was oriented to reduce the operation costs, to facilitate the activities of monitoring of the market, to cause the transparency in the process of prices making, to guarantee the fairness in the contract celebration, to fortify the mechanisms of operative security and fundamentally to create the technological conditions for the later development of the Market. The Electronic Trading, Transaction, Registry and Allocation System (SENTRA®-DERIVADOS) it is a mechanism that replaced the open outcry market, by another remote one, totally automated and on real time. Through SENTRA®-DERIVADOS it is possible to register sale positions and buys, to conduct cross transactions, self entry transactions and transactions at settlement price , as well as, to make the monitoring of the positions introduced to the system, to determine the proportions the depth of the market and to identify self entry transactions and cross transactions. Also, the SENTRA®-DERIVADOS allows to obtain on line data and to transmit it on the same way towards the Automated Securities Integral System (SIVA) from where it is spread towards all the financial system. SENTRA®-DERIVADOS was developed under the architecture client/server. The central server of the system is TANDEM equipment, with architecture to support applications of critical and tolerant to failure missions. The central server connects to the workstations by the communication protocol TCP/IP, simultaneously that maintains interfaces in real time with the other applications of calculation and dissemination of data of the MexDer and other institutions of the exchange market. Benefits of SENTRA®-DERIVADOS. Less Cost. Eliminates the communication costs to the Trading Floor. Reduces the personnel for the administration of the trading. Electronic orders book. Total Vision of the Book Bids or Offers are registered in hundredth of second. Reduction of the difference of prices between purchase and sale. Market transparency. Efficiency in price making. Increase of the confidence of the public. On line answer. On line execution and allocation. It avoids technical misfortunes of the open outcry market. Consultations of SENTRA®-DERIVADOS. All the functions of SENTRA®-DERIVADOS are made in a single window, divided in the 11 following sections: Class Consultation Portfolio of Operation Statistical Controls of consultation Market Sales side, Purchases and Facts Active Cross Transactions Active Consultations Available Portfolios Multiple Order Entry Message area Ticker General System Message area Participants. For the trading of contracts through SENTRA®-DERIVADOS all Clearing Members and Traders who had receive an authorization to trade from the Board of Directors participate. In order to guarantee the rigorous use of the negotiation system, each user has an electronic confidential signature, which consists of a user number and an individual access code, which must be modified periodically by the user. Functionalities of the System. The functions approved by the Committee of Admission and New Products are the following ones: Trading Hours Access codes Bid or Offer Entry Modification and retirement of orders Cross Transactions Self-Entry Confirmation of transactions Auctions Trading in account of other Intermediary (give up) Calculation of settlement prices Trading at settlement prices Communication with the systems involved

S/MART®

The joint venture with the Spanish Market of Futures and Financial Options MEFF on June the 2nd 2003, with the intention of developing an Options market in Mexico, contemplated the use of the S/MART (System for Markets Automatic Real Time) electronic system that MEFF uses for the negotiation, clearing and settlement of its markets. In MexDer, since March 22nd 2004 it is used for the trading of Options, as well as for the negotiation of futures whose underlying asset is an instrument of the capital market; continuing in charge of Asigna, the functions relative to clear and settle in his own systems.

In this way the trading of futures has been moved from SENTRA Derivados® to S/MART on the Price and Quotation Index (IPC) of the Mexican Stock Exchange, as well as the individual stock futures contracts listed at MexDer.

S/MART main characteristics are the following:

• Automatic negotiation by connected intelligent terminals with the central servers.
• Existence of mechanisms of reconnection in case of failure of the communications lines, allowing alternate routes of communication.

The English version of the Electronic Trading is published for information purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. However, in case of any interpretation controversy, the Spanish version shall prevail.