During the past week, FIF featured the following spotlight presentations:

• FIF Data and Technology Committee (October 28). John Ramsay of IEX reviewed an IEX proposal for a new offset-peg order type.
• FIF Tax Information Reporting Working Group (October 29). Stevie Conlon, Robyn Lang, Robert Schwaba and Anna Vayser of Wolters Kluwer discussed recently-issued regulations under section 1446(f) of the Internal Revenue Code relating to the withholding tax imposed on the sale, exchange or redemption of a partnership interest held by a foreign person.
• FIF Front Office Committee (November 2). Larry Tabb of Bloomberg reviewed recent proposals by the SEC and the SROs relating to market data infrastructure and governance.

FIF will feature the following spotlight presentations on upcoming Committee and Working Group calls:

• FIF Cybersecurity Working Group (November 5 at 11 am ET). Al Berg of Endava will discuss cybersecurity in the new distributed working environment.
• FIF Back Office Committee (November 10 at 11 am ET). Greg Lee of Paxos will discuss Paxos’ clearing agency plan leveraging blockchain for back-office.
• FIF Webinar: Retail/Institutional Options Trading in 2020-2021 (November 10 at 2pm ET). Please register for this webinar here.
• FIF Emerging Technologies Working Group (November 19 at 11 am ET). Evan Schnidman, founder of Prattle, will discuss AI efficiency in research.

The first half-hour of each call will be dedicated to the spotlight topic. The second half-hour will be focused on the regular Committee or Working Group agenda.

To participate in these spotlight presentations, you must be a participant of the relevant Committee or Working Group. To sign-up for a Committee or Working Group, please log on to your FIF account (fif.com), click Profile in the top right-hand corner and check-off any new Distribution List that you want to join. Please send a note to fifinfo@fif.com with any questions

FIF will feature the following spotlight presentations on upcoming FIF Committee and Working Group calls:

• FIF Data and Technology Committee (October 28 at 10 am ET). John Ramsay of IEX will review an IEX proposal for a new offset-peg order type.
• FIF Tax Information Reporting Working Group (October 29 at 10 am ET). Stevie Conlon, Robert Schwaba and Anna Vayser of Wolters Kluwer will discuss recently-issued regulations under section 1446(f) of the Internal Revenue Code relating to the withholding tax imposed on the sale, exchange or redemption of a partnership interest held by a foreign person.
• FIF Front Office Committee (November 2 at 11 am ET). Larry Tabb of Bloomberg will review recent proposals by the SEC and the SROs relating to market data infrastructure and governance.
• FIF Cybersecurity Working Group (November 5 at 11 am ET). Al Berg of Endava will discuss cybersecurity in the new distributed working environment.
• FIF Emerging Technologies Working Group (November; date and time TBD). Evan Schnidman, founder of Prattle, will discuss AI efficiency in research.

The first half-hour of each call will be dedicated to the spotlight topic. The second half-hour will be focused on the normal Committee or Working Group agenda.

To participate in these spotlight presentations, you must be a participant of the relevant Committee or Working Group. To sign-up for a Committee or Working Group, please log on to your FIF account at www.fif.com , click Profile in the top right-hand corner of the page and check-off any new Distribution List that you want to join. Please send a note to fifinfo@fif.com with any questions.

FIF annually holds one of our in-person events each year in Chicago, where we are hosted by Cboe. To keep up with tradition, this year is no different, however, instead of the normal in-person event, FIF/Cboe will be hosting a webinar. FIFs Advisory Chair, Tom Jordan, will moderate a panel where the topics discussed will focus on the growth of retail options trading, institutional options trading strategies during Covid-19, CAT Options, and other global options trends. FIF will send an invite out for this webinar in the coming days. 

On October 15, 2020, FIF submitted a letter to the CAT Operating Committee requesting an extension from October 26, 2020 to December 31, 2020 of the compliance date for requiring Industry Members to correct equity interfirm, exchange and TRF linkage exceptions by 8 am on T+3. FIF also requests in the letter an extension from January 4, 2021 to January 31, 2021 of the compliance date for requiring Industry Members to correct options interfirm and exchange linkage exceptions by 8 am on T+3.

Based on requests from FIF and our Members, FINRA CAT has posted contact information of select exchanges in order to assist in resolving linkage errors.

On October 6, 2020, FIF submitted to FINRA CAT aggregated responses from FIF Members relating to clock synchronization and required granularity of event timestamp reporting. All responses were anonymized.