The SEC has scheduled an open meeting for Wednesday October 18 at 10 am ET on Volume-Based Exchange Transaction Pricing for NMS Stocks. According to the agenda published by the SEC, the SEC “will consider whether to propose a new rule to prohibit national securities exchanges from offering volume-based transaction pricing in connection with the execution of agency-related orders in NMS stocks; and to require national securities exchanges to have certain anti-evasion rules and written policies and procedures and disclose certain information if they offer volume-based transaction pricing for...

FIF TRACE Working Group.  The TRACE Working Group reviewed a draft letter to FINRA requesting written confirmation that the TRACE ATS exemption does not impact the FINRA Trading Activity Fee (TAF). The Working Group discussed a question from an FIF member on TRACE reporting for GNMA construction loans. The Working Group discussed the implementation of the TRACE reporting changes scheduled to take effect on November 6, including TRACE reporting for sovereign bonds and the requirement to report electronically executed transactions in Treasury securities in the increment captured by the...

The Options Price Reporting Authority (OPRA) delayed the go live date for doubling the data streams of its consolidated tape for equity options, following requests from the market for more time, according to a story in The Trade news. OPRA previously confirmed that it was expanding its data dissemination from a 48-line to a 96-line multicast data distribution network in a move aimed at optimal symbol balancing and line capacity utilization. OPRA’s subscribers have now requested additional test time, which the authority has granted, with the go live now set for February 5, 2024, as opposed...

Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) group has invested in Kodex AI, a Berlin based startup developing an AI-powered solution tailored to the specific needs of the financial industry. According to a story in MarketsMedia news, the investment follows a collaboration which started earlier this year as part of the bank’s Entrepreneur in Residence program, which invites talented entrepreneurs to partner with the bank to validate, develop and scale their ideas. Over the past months, Kodex AI’s co-founders Thomas Kaiser and Claus Lang have worked with the bank’s teams on a large...

BlackRock and Barclays have gone live on JP Morgan’s Tokenized Collateral Network (TCN) with the platform facilitating a collateral settlement for an OTC derivative transaction for the first time. TCN was first revealed in May 2022 following a landmark transaction using tokenized Money Market Fund (MMF) shares as collateral, meeting an industry-wide desire for mobilization without the transfer of the underlying asset.  The platform is a private blockchain application which sits between a collateral receiver and a provider allowing the tokenized representation of the...

MEMX, the member’s exchange, has launched its platform for trading listed options following approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission in August last year.  Named MEMX Options, the new exchange was built to extend the firm’s remit following the success of its equities exchange and member-aligned market model to the options community. MEMX Options will leverage MEMX’s data-centric exchange architecture and infrastructure, offering traders passive and active risk management capabilities. Since launching in 2020, MEMX has grown to over 4% market share.

Overbond, a provider of AI-driven data and analytics and trade automation solutions for the global fixed income markets, has partnered with SS&C Eze to provide bond trading analytics and data through the Eze Eclipse single-page application. Eze users can now embed the Overbond client interface as a widget in their Eze Eclipse worksheet. Through Overbond, SS&C Eze clients will be able to access AI and cloud-driven analytics, including: aggregate bond trade real-time data streams; liquidity and price confidence analytics that auto-adapt to trade size and direction, enabling traders to...

FIF is excited to partner once again with Cboe Global Markets on our Annual FIF Chicago Event. After opening remarks from Catherine Clay, there will be two panels, one focusing on regulation and compliance, and the other focusing on market data and technology. FIF Advisory Chair, Tom Jordan, will moderate both panels. The regulation and compliance panel will feature Gregg Berman of Citadel, Angela Lucas of Simplex and Nicole Pursley of Cboe Global Markets. The market data and technology panel will feature Jeff Wells of Cboe Global Markets, along with additional panelists to be announced...

FIF is excited to announce our year-end event will take place on the evening of Tuesday December 5, and it will be sponsored by Société Générale. Those who were at the last Société Générale event back in 2017 know what a great venue this is, and FIF is excited to partner with Société Générale once again. We are planning on running two panels, with the first focusing on technology, including trading infrastructure in the cloud. The second panel will focus on operational challenges of new regulations in 2024 and beyond. Please save the date on your calendars as December can get busy before...