Morgan Stanley Securities and Merrill Lynch Securities have joined alternative trading venue Nextrade as members. With more foreign brokerages taking part, Nextrade’s market base is expected to broaden.

Nextrade said on July 2 it approved membership for Morgan Stanley Securities’ Seoul branch and Merrill Lynch Securities’ Seoul branch on July 1.

Morgan Stanley Securities plans to complete construction of its smart order routing (SOR) system by November. Merrill Lynch Securities plans to complete its system within this year and, after SOR-related tests, push to participate across all markets.

SOR is an order-processing system that automatically routes investor orders to the most advantageous market among multiple venues. To participate in Nextrade, firms need to build systems that can handle order allocation between the Korea Exchange and Nextrade.

The new memberships bring the total number of Nextrade member brokerages to 36. As participation expands beyond domestic brokerages to include more foreign firms, market access is also expected to improve.

Nextrade is also seeing a trend of a rising share of foreign trading. Foreign trading by turnover rose to 12.3 percent in June 2026 from 0.4 percent in March 2025. Over the same period, the share of retail trading fell to 84.9 percent from 98.5 percent.

Kim Hak-su (김학수), CEO of Nextrade, said, "We welcome Morgan Stanley Securities and Merrill Lynch Securities joining Nextrade as members." He added, "With the two companies joining, we expect Nextrade’s market base to expand further going forward."