FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                    2000-71
                                
         Commission Grants ISE Exemption To Accommodate
       Its Electronic Market in the Marketwide Data System
                                
     Washington, DC, May 26, 2000 -- The Commission yesterday
granted the International Securities Exchange's (ISE) request for
a temporary exemption to accommodate the ISE in the consolidated
system for options market information.  Absent this exemption,
the ISE could have been precluded by the marketwide plan for
consolidating information from disseminating its own market data
within the ISE's electronic market.

     The ISE is the first fully electronic options exchange and
will begin trading today in three options classes, with plans to
expand to 600 options classes in the future.  As an electronic
options exchange, the ISE has no "floor."  The Commission's
action allows the ISE to provide its market data, including quote
size, to its members as part of its trading system, like a
traditional market provides its information on its floor.  The
temporary exemption does not permit the ISE or its members to
disseminate ISE market data to customers.

     In granting this exemption, the Commission reaffirmed its
strong support for the dissemination and display of consolidated
market data to all market participants.  Sole reliance on
consolidated options data by ISE members, however, is not
currently feasible because this data will not include the size of
quotes until January 2001.  This temporary exemption is designed
to allow the ISE - beginning today -- to disseminate to its
members its own market data under conditions designed to preserve
the value of consolidated market information.

     Specifically, in addition to ISE market data, ISE members
must have access to the consolidated data of all options markets,
either on the same terminal or available at the same workstation.
Moreover, the exemption prohibits the ISE from disseminating its
market data directly to its members on a more timely basis than
ISE provides it to the consolidated data system under any plan to
allocate consolidated systems capacity during peak usage periods.
This condition is intended to ensure that the information about
ISE's market that others receive through the consolidated system
is as timely as the market information that ISE members receive
directly from ISE.

     Finally, the Commission notes that it is granting this
exemption only to ISE at this time, but would favorably consider
identical requests from other options markets.
     
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