Intercontinental Exchange’s ICE Bonds and MarketAxess have unveiled plans to connect their respective liquidity networks in a bid to improve efficiency and access to deeper liquidity in fixed income markets. The two firms plan to establish connectivity to their respective protocols and liquidity pools, with the move set to enable ICE Bonds’ automated trading system (ATS), ICE TMC, and MarketAxess’ Open Trading network to communicate with each other directly, enhancing depth and reach for users globally.

Interactive Brokers, an automated global electronic broker, has announced that its clients can now access listed derivatives on Bursa Malaysia, one of the largest bourses in ASEAN. With this launch, IBKR clients can now trade Crude Palm Oil Futures (FCPO) and FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Futures (FKLI) alongside global stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, funds and more from a single unified platform. FCPO is a Ringgit Malaysia (MYR) denominated Crude Palm Oil Futures Contract traded on Bursa Malaysia Derivatives, providing market participants a global price benchmark for the Crude...

Morgan Stanley said it finished deploying its second generative artificial intelligence application to financial advisers last week, favoring homegrown solutions over out-of-the-box tooling from tech providers according to a story in The Wall Street Journal. The new tool, AI @ Morgan Stanley Debrief, which summarizes video meetings and generates drafts of follow-up emails based on them, was Morgan Stanley’s second generative AI use case built in collaboration with OpenAI. It follows the September 2023 rollout of its AI knowledge assistant tool that helps financial advisers quickly...

Northern Trust has been selected by UK-based wealth management firm True Potential to provide outsourced trading services according to a story in The Trade news. Offered through its Integrated Trading Solutions (ITS) platform, Northern Trust will provide services across equities, fixed income and exchange traded derivatives, with coverage from multiple trading locations. The custodian will assume the trading function across True Potential’s internally managed funds with approximately £6.1 billion in assets under management. The agreement expands the existing relationship between the two...

The next call for the OFR Repo Reporting Working Group will be on Monday August 5 at 11 am ET. The Working Group will discuss issues and questions from FIF members relating to the new requirement to report to the Treasury Department’s Office of Financial Research (OFR) repos that are executed bilaterally and not centrally-cleared. The Working Group will also review a draft supplemental letter to the OFR requesting additional guidance relating to the new reporting requirement.

FIF has scheduled a call for the Securities Lending Transparency Working Group for Tuesday August 6 at 11 am ET. The Working Group will continue its review of a draft FIF comment letter in response to (i) the FINRA rule filing to adopt rules for the new Securities Lending and Transparency Engine (SLATE) system and (ii) the draft FINRA Participant Specification for SLATE.

FIF has scheduled two calls this week for the Short Sales / Reg SHO / Short Reporting Working Group. The first call will be on Tuesday August 6 at 2 pm ET; the second call will be on Thursday August 8 at 11 am ET. During the Tuesday call, the Working Group will review and seek to finalize a revised draft follow-up letter to the SEC relating to the implementation of short position reporting. During the Thursday call, the Working Group will discuss how to define “investment discretion”, “control” and “account” for short position reporting.  

The CAT CAIS call for this week will be on Wednesday August 7 at 11 am ET. The CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group call for this week will be on Wednesday August 7 at 2 pm ET.

FIF has scheduled the next call for the Rule 606 Working Group for Tuesday August 13 at 3 pm ET. The Working Group will review and discuss a revised draft FIF letter to the SEC requesting guidance on how to report the percentage of orders routed to different venues in Rule 606(a) reports.