On February 5, FIF and the FIF CAIS Working Group Co-Chairs participated in a meeting with FINRA CAT to discuss the creation of an industry working group to address issues relating to customer identifiers as FINRA CAT starts to move forward toward implementation of CAIS. The first meeting for this working group is scheduled for February 19. Over the past several weeks, FIF and the FIF CAT Co-Chairs have participated in a series of meetings with FINRA CAT to discuss comments and questions raised by FIF Members.

On December 23, 2020, FINRA issued a request for comment on Enhancements to TRACE Reporting for U.S. Treasury Securities. FIF has drafted a comment letter on the rule proposal based on feedback from participants of the FIF TRACE Working Group. The next FIF TRACE Working Group call is scheduled for February 16 at 2 pm ET for FIF Members to provide any final comments on the draft comment letter. During the call, FIF Members also will discuss a rule proposal by the Federal Reserve to expand TRACE reporting for Treasuries and agencies to certain depository institutions and the potential impact on broker-dealers that currently report to TRACE. The Working Group also will discuss the Recommendation Regarding Defining “Electronic Trading” for Regulatory Purposes issued by the Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee (FIMSAC) on October 5, 2020 as it relates to TRACE reporting.

At the request of FIF members, FIF is creating a Working Group to focus on short sale interpretive and operational questions and potential enhancements to Regulation SHO. If you are interested in joining this new group, please email us at fifinfo@fif.com and we will add the subscription to your account.

During October 2018 FIF members presented recommendations to the SEC staff for the modernization of Rule 605. These recommendations, which were developed through the FIF Rule 605 Working Group, were focused on updating Rule 605 to reflect market changes since the adoption of Rule 605 in 2000.  More recently, various FIF members have requested that FIF reconvene the Rule 605 Working Group to review and update these recommendations to re-present to the SEC staff during 2021. FIF has scheduled an initial call for this Working Group for February 25 at 11 am ET.

The series will be multiple panels for FIF Members that will address the implementation considerations of the 898 page Rule. The panels are moderated by Tom Jordan, FIF Advisory Chair. The kickoff panel on February 1st was the Rule Overview and featured Wayne Aaron of the Vedder Price law firm and Matt Billings of Two Sigma. The second webinar took place on February 8th and featured John Ramsay of IEX,  Rich Steiner of RBC and Rob Mohan of Wellington. The next panel, scheduled for February 22 at 4pm ET, will focus on Governance & Pricing. Further information about this webinar will be distributed later this week.