Cboe Global Markets announced a new strategic initiative in collaboration with MSCI Inc. a provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community, to expand its suite of Cboe-MSCI Index options and volatility indices. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, Cboe will further expand its existing MSCI Index options suite by introducing three new products based on additional MSCI global indices: Cboe MSCI World Index Options (MXWLD), Cboe MSCI ACWI Index Options (MXACW), and Cboe MSCI USA Index Options (MXUSA). These options are set to begin trading on...

On February 14 FIF submitted a supplemental comment letter on the SEC’s rule proposal to modernize Rule 605. FIF would like to thank the members of the FIF Rule 605 Working Group for their participation in the drafting of this comment letter.

On February 15 FIF submitted a comment letter to the SEC 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 would like to thank the members of the FIF TRACE / Fixed Income Working Group for their participation in the drafting of this comment letter.

The Back Office Committee will have its next call on Tuesday February 20 at 11 am ET to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month. Jim Hraska of FICC will discuss the rule recently adopted by the SEC to expand centralized clearing of Treasuries.

FIF has scheduled two additional calls for the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group for this week. On Tuesday February 20 at 1 pm ET, the Working Group will continue its discussion of CAT billing and reconciliation. On Thursday February 22 at 2 pm ET, the Working Group will discuss linkage of representative to customer orders and linkage of order fulfillments to representative and principal orders. The Tuesday and Thursday calls are in addition to the regularly-scheduled CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group call on Wednesday February 21 at 2 pm ET.

FIF has scheduled a call for the FIF Securities Lending Transparency Working Group for Tuesday February 20 at 3 pm ET. During the call, an FIF member will provide an update on its discussions with FINRA relating to implementation of the new securities lending reporting system mandated by the SEC. 

FIF has scheduled a call for the TRACE Working Group for Thursday February 22 at 10 am ET. The Working Group will discuss FIF potentially submitting a supplemental comment letter on the FINRA and MSRB rule proposals to reduce the reporting timeframes for corporate, agency and municipal bonds to one minute.

On Thursday February 22 at 11 am, Ignacio Sandoval of the Morgan Lewis law firm will review the rule adopted by the SEC to expand the definition of “dealer” under the Securities Exchange Act. FIF has invited the members of the Compliance and Surveillance Working Group and the SEC/FINRA Regulations Working Group to participate on this call. If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of either Working Group, please update your FIF profile or contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The Data and Technology Committee will have its next call on Wednesday February 28 at 10 am ET to review capacity, latency and volume data for the prior month for the equity, option, currency, crypto and futures markets. The spotlight presenters will be Alex Mirarchi and Mike Perna of Amazon Web Services, who will discuss their recent white paper on Running an Exchange in the Cloud. FIF has also invited the members of the FIF Emerging Technologies Working Group to participate on this call.