On December 15, FIF and the FIF CAIS Co-Chairs participated on a call with representatives from the SEC and the CAT Operating Committee to discuss CAT CAIS reporting issues. During the call, the SEC staff requested that FIF provide feedback from FIF members on the challenges with reporting addresses at the CAT Customer level for accounts with multiple Beneficial Owners and reporting CAIS data for Authorized Traders. FIF has sent a survey to members of the CAIS Working Group on these topics. FIF requests that members respond to the survey on or before Monday, January 10.

As of January 1, 2022, the CAT Committee will be renamed as the CAT Monthly Update Working Group and the CAT Tech Specs Working Group will be renamed as the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group. This is intended to provide a clearer description of the functions of these groups. Starting in 2022, the CAT Transaction Reporting Working Group will meet on Wednesdays at 2pm ET; the Transaction Reporting Working Group will no longer meet on Mondays. The CAT Monthly Update Working Group will meet on Thursday, January 6 at 2pm ET. The CAT CAIS Working Group will continue to have its regularly...

No Working Group Meetings Were Held Last Week

AXA Investment Managers and Societe Generale’s digital assets division, Forge, have successfully completed their first transaction based on blockchain infrastructure. The buy-side institution purchased €3 million euros worth of bonds issued by the EIB in the form of security tokens using the public blockchain Ethereum according to a story in The Trade news. Blockchain has continued to grip the market in the last year as market trends like decentralized finance (DeFi) grow in popularity. DeFi aims to bring a more democratized approach to the capital markets by challenging traditional...

In a story in MarketsMedia news, Kevin Tyrrell, Head of NYSE Research, says that the year 2021 set a second-straight record for new listings on the NYSE, adding more than $1 trillion in new market capitalization. The year’s IPOs, direct listings and SPAC business combinations were able to leverage the NYSE DMM model to maximize liquidity and price stability for the opening auction and first minutes of trading. Retail trading also remained a major theme, punctuated by the growing interest in “meme stocks” that began in January. Importantly, retail trading growth impacted the listed options...

Adam Inzirillo, Head of North American Equities at Cboe Global Markets, sees continued growth in options and equities in the coming year. A lot of the new trends and themes that we saw emerge in 2020 around the rise of the retail investor continued strongly into 2021. Significantly, in the first quarter of 2021, we witnessed record trading volumes and record messaging in both equities and options, much of which was driven by retail investors. We see investors becoming more sophisticated and engaging in day-trading activities and deploying capital into more complex strategies as...

The European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) has recommended specific clearing services provided by LSEG’s LCH and ICE Clear Europe continue to be recognised as of systematic importance in the European Union post-Brexit. In a report assessing the role of UK-established central counterparties (CCPs) in Europe, the regulator found that LCH’s SwapClear interest rate derivatives clearing service and the credit default swaps (CDS) and short-term interest rate derivatives services provided by ICE Clear Europe should maintain a recognised status in Europe. The services were identified as...

Bloomberg’s data license content is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a move which allows clients worldwide to receive content cloud-natively while reducing data on-boarding time significantly. The move builds upon Bloomberg’s existing relationship with AWS, following the launch of its B-PIPE data feed on the cloud in late 2019. Data license clients will now have the cloud-native ability to receive Bloomberg OneData content, including reference, pricing, and regulatory data, as well as research, corporate actions and alternative data for over 50 million securities and 30...

On December 23, 2021, FIF submitted a comment letter on a rule filing submitted by FINRA to the SEC (SR-FINRA-2021-030) to require firms to report new modifiers for delayed Treasury spot trades and portfolio trades that are reported to TRACE. FIF would like to thank the members of the TRACE Working Group for their contributions in the drafting of the comment letter.