The FIF Financial Risk Regulations Working Group focuses on regulations relating to financial risk, including margin requirements and the SEC’s net capital and customer protection rules.

SEC Rule on Short Position and Short Activity Reporting. FIF hosted a call for the FIF Short Sales / Reg SHO / Short Interest Reporting Working Group to continue the discussion of issues and questions from FIF members relating to implementation of the SEC Rule on Short Position and Short Activity Reporting. The Working Group discussed the scope of reportable securities, identifying data sources for reportable securities, reporting based on settlement date versus trade date, determining the closing price when a trade is not executed on a settlement date, currency conversion for positions...

Presentation by Amazon Web Services on Running an Exchange in the Cloud. FIF hosted a call for the Data and Technology Committee and the Emerging Technologies Working Group. Alex Mirarchi and Mike Perna of Amazon Web Services discussed their recent white paper on Running an Exchange in the Cloud. Residential Supervisory Locations Subgroup. FIF hosted a call for this subgroup to discuss the FINRA rule change relating to Residential Supervisory Locations (“RSLs”) and FINRA Regulatory Notice 24-02, which provides implementation details for designating RSLs. Front Office Committee. The...

FIF Back Office Committee; Update from FICC on Centralized Clearing of Treasuries. The Back Office Committee reviewed applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month. Jim Hraska of FICC discussed the rule recently adopted by the SEC to expand centralized clearing of Treasuries. Please find the Agenda here. FIF TRACE Working Group. The TRACE Working Group reviewed a draft supplemental comment letter on the FINRA and MSRB rule proposals to reduce the reporting timeframes for corporate, agency and municipal bonds to one minute. FIF submitted the...

Fractional Shares. The Working Group discussed a request for feedback from FINRA representatives relating to FINRA’s consideration of changes to the TRF and ORF reporting systems to allow for reporting of fractional shares.  SEC Rule on Short Position and Short Activity Reporting. The FIF Short Sales / Reg SHO / Short Interest Reporting Working Group discussed issues and questions from FIF members relating to implementation of the SEC Rule on Short Position and Short Activity Reporting. FIF Rule 605 Working Group. FIF hosted a call for the Rule 605 Working Group to review and make...

FIF Rule 605 Working Group. FIF hosted two calls this past week for the Rule 605 Working Group. During both calls the Working Group reviewed and edited a draft FIF comment letter to the SEC on the SEC’s rule proposal to modernize Rule 605. FIF TRACE Working Group. The TRACE Working Group reviewed and discussed a revised draft of an FIF comment letter on (i) the January 11 rule filing by FINRA to reduce to one minute the TRACE reporting timeframe for securities that are currently subject to a fifteen-minute reporting timeframe and (ii) the parallel rule filing by the MSRB on January 12....

FIF Rule 605 Working Group. FIF updated the Working Group on the recent FIF member calls with Gary Gensler (SEC Chair), Sai Rao (Policy Counsel to Chair Gensler), Jessica Wachter (SEC Chief Economist and Director of the SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis), Haoxiang Zhu (Director of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets) and other SEC representatives to discuss the FIF comment letters on the SEC’s rule proposal to modernize Rule 605. The Working Group discussed next steps for FIF with respect to this rule filing. FIF Fractional Shares Subgroup. FIF hosted a call for the...

FIF T+1 and Trade-Date Allocations Subgroup. The subgroup discussed issues and questions from FIF members relating to implementation of the requirements for T+1 settlement (amended SEC Rule 15c6-1) and trade-date allocation, confirmation and affirmation (new SEC Rule 15c6-2) that will take effect on May 28. FIF Digital Assets Working Group. The Working Group discussed the disclosure requirements for digital assets and applicable exemptions. The Working Group discussed the requirements of SEC Rule 15c2-11 (Publication or submission of quotations without specified information) as applied...

FIF TRACE Working Group. The TRACE Working Group reviewed and discussed the January 11 rule filing by FINRA to reduce to one minute the TRACE reporting timeframe for securities that are currently subject to a fifteen-minute reporting timeframe and the parallel rule filing by the MSRB on January 12. The Working Group discussed TRACE reporting for foreign sovereign bonds that trade dirty (i.e., with accrued interest included in the price). FIF Clock Synch for Fixed Income Subgroup. The subgroup reviewed a draft FIF letter to FINRA requesting confirmation about the supervisory obligations...