Trading of the Factoids will start after the genesis block is released. Which is part of the first milestone that must be delivered. You can see the code coming along here on Github: https://github.com/FactomProject/

In short the code is getting close. Paul Snow will be providing a developer update next week on the Factom blog. Testing will be key for the core developers to feel confident to release the Factoid chain live. For those will the dev skills assistance with testing is very welcome.