• Back Office Committee. On August 17th at 11 am ET, a team from DTCC will come on our monthly committee call to present on their Securities Financing Transaction (SFT) Clearing Service. The SFT service provides central clearing for equity lending and borrowing transactions.
• Data and Technology Committee. On August 18th at 10 am ET, John Ramsay from IEX will come on to discuss changes to IEX’s retail program, which were approved recently by the SEC. IEX will be publishing a retail liquidity indicator on their prop feed and on the tape showing where there is trading interest for at least 100 shares willing to trade against retail orders at the midpoint.

The next meeting of the Rule 606 Working Group is scheduled for Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 2 pm ET. The Working Group will continue its discussion of look-through for Rule 606 reporting of options routing, including potential meetings with Securities and Exchange Commission personnel to discuss this issue further.

On August 10, 2021, FIF sent a survey to FIF members on Rule 605 for options. This is an opportunity for FIF members to provide input to the SEC before the SEC issues a rule proposal in this area. FIF requests that members provide their survey responses by September 13, 2021. Earlier responses also are welcome. All responses are anonymized.

The next meeting of the FIF Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group is scheduled for Thursday, August 19, 2021 at 11 am ET. The agenda for this call is to continue the discussion of an FIF comment letter on FINRA Regulatory Notice 21-19, “FINRA Requests Comment on Short Interest Position Reporting Enhancements and Other Changes Related to Short Sale Reporting”.

On August 12, 2021, FIF sent out a survey request to get feedback from FIF member firms on what they consider to be the most important open issues relating to CAT CAIS. The purpose for this survey is to assist the Working Group to identify the key open issues on CAIS and discuss any next steps for following-up with the regulators on these issues. All responses will be anonymized. If we receive your firm’s response by end-of-day on August 17, 2021, the Working Group will discuss your response during the August 18, 2021 CAIS Working Group call. If we receive your response after August 17, 2021, the Working Group will discuss your response on a subsequent CAIS Working Group call.