Fidelity Investments has launched The Fidelity Stack, its first immersive metaverse experience aimed at offering a new way to learn investing basics. Built in Decentraland, The Fidelity Stack features a multi-level design complete with a lobby, dance floor, and rooftop sky garden for users to explore on foot – or even through teleport. In the Invest Quest at The Fidelity Stack, users are challenged to traverse the building learning the basics of ETF investing while gathering “orbs” along the way. In addition to providing a primer on different types of investment products, including...

The FIF TRACE Working Group will meet on Thursday May 12 at 3 pm to review new FAQs published by FINRA relating to TRACE reporting by covered depository institutions. The Working Group also will review guidance provided by the Federal Reserve Board to an FIF member on this topic. The Working Group also will discuss a recent announcement by the MSRB relating to reporting of municipal bond trades and recent statements by SEC Chair Gensler relating to TRACE and fixed income transparency. The Working Group also will review the current timeline for the recently approved rule change to include a...

FIF has scheduled an additional CAT CAIS Working Group call for this week to review the May 4 and May 5, 2022 updates to the CAIS Technical Specifications and to continue the review of the updates to the CAIS Reporting Scenarios posted by FINRA CAT on April 22, 2022. This call is scheduled for Monday May 9, 2022 at 11 am ET. This call is in addition to the regularly-scheduled CAIS Working Group calls on Wednesday and Friday.

At the request of several FIF member firms, FIF has scheduled a call for the Compliance Working Group that will focus on trade surveillance issues. FIF has scheduled this call for Tuesday May 17, 2022 at 2 pm ET. If you would like to participate on this call and are not a member of the Compliance Working Group, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Please also contact us if you would like to discuss any specific issues relating to trade surveillance.

CAT Monthly Update Working Group. The CAT Monthly Update Working Group reviewed guidance and updates from the SROs and FINRA CAT on CAT transaction reporting and CAT CAIS reporting during the prior month. The Working Group also reviewed the current areas of focus for FIF members and the current open issues for CAT transaction reporting and CAT CAIS reporting. FIF CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group. The CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group discussed issues and questions from FIF members relating to the tradingSession value for reporting NAV orders, a new linkage file to be...

Pragma Financial Systems LLC, an independent, global leader in multi-asset execution technology, announced that it has entered into a multi-year agreement with the New York Stock Exchange to provide NYSE Equity Floor Brokers with Polaris, an advanced trading platform customized to the needs of the Floor Brokers and their clients. According to a story in Traders Magazine, Pragma’s Polaris, a high-performance EMS, incorporates an HTML5 interface to provide the Floor Brokers with dynamic visualizations, customized alerting, complex workflows and algorithmic execution; and leverages the...

SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. announced it will integrate Sustainalytics' ESG data into SS&C Advent platforms to power portfolio management and analytics workflows for its global client base. Morningstar Sustainalytics is a global provider of ESG research, ratings and data. The Sustainalytics ESG data integration will be made available on SS&C Advent's Genesis Platform and the Black Diamond Wealth Platform in the second half of 2022. The Genesis Platform leverages modern cloud technology built on a singular data store, solving critical portfolio management, analytics and...

Abel Noser, a provider of multi-asset trade analytics and agency-only brokerage services, has been utilizing, back-testing, and optimizing trading algos for decades. According to a story in Traders Magazine, the firm was closely involved with the development of the original VWAP (volume-weighted average price). “The first execution based on the VWAP was in 1984 for the Ford Motor Company” commented Doug Rivelli, Abel Noser’s President. “In 1985, VWAPs were very revolutionary and really changed the way that people traded. In 2022, we’re doing it again with START,” he said. START is Abel...

Refinitiv announced an agreement that allows for its comprehensive suite of quantitative data to now be made available on Snowflake’s Financial Services Data Cloud. Asset managers and hedge funds can now access Refinitiv quant data alongside existing Snowflake vendor and proprietary data on Snowflake’s Data Cloud, which is configurable to run across numerous AWS and Azure cloud regions. Making Refinitiv quant data available via Snowflake means that quant researchers are freed from the burden of managing data infrastructure and can spend more time...