Power spot market reform has been the focus of China's electric power industry restructuring initiative in recent years. The pace of introducing power spot markets in a number of provinces are now being accelerated. In power spot market, the transaction clearing results are closely coupled with power grid dispatching operations, and the power grid structure could deeply affect market members' earnings. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a method for evaluating transmission power grid performance in the context of power spot market. To this end, this paper presents a novel method for evaluating the operation efficiency of a transmission grid based on locational marginal prices (LMP). Firstly, the main characteristics of power spot market is introduced and the influence mechanism of transmission power grid on the market clearing outcomes is analyzed. The market operation efficiency of the transmission grid is calculated by comparing the market clearing results with or without considering the operational constraints of the transmission grid. Besides, an efficient computing method based on reinforcement learning is proposed to calculate the index. Finally, a case study based on the IEEE-33 bus system shows that this method can quantify the influence of transmission grid operational constraints on the transaction clearing results in spot market. The transmission grid performance index could be useful both in power market trading information disclosure and as a reference index for transmission expansion planning. INDEX TERMS Power spot market, transmission grid, locational marginal price, transmission network expansion planning, market performance evaluation.