On October 15, 2021, FINRA filed SR-FINRA-2021-029 with the SEC, “Proposed Rule Change to Amend FINRA Rule 6732 (Exemption from Trade Reporting Obligation for Certain Transactions on an Alternative Trading System)”. FIF has scheduled a call for the TRACE Working Group for Thursday December 2 at 11am ET to discuss FIF member comments on the rule filing.

On Wednesday, December 15 at 10am ET Alaina R. Clark, Assistant Director for Stakeholder Engagement at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), will present to a joint call of the FIF Cybersecurity and Compliance Working Groups. CISA is an agency within the Department of Homeland Security. Ms. Clark will discuss the role and functions of CISA, CISA’s current areas of focus, recommendations for industry members on cybersecurity processes and management, reporting of cybersecurity incidents, and opportunities for enhanced cooperation between the industry and federal...

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday, for this week FIF is cancelling the regularly scheduled Wednesday and Friday CAT CAIS Working Group calls and the regularly scheduled Wednesday CAT Tech Specs Working Group call. For this week only, FIF is moving the Monday CAT Tech Specs Working Group from 2pm to 11am ET.

On December 16, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission granted temporary exemptive relief, until July 31, 2023, from the CAT NMS Plan requirement to link representative orders (riskless principal/ customer facilitation orders) to the associated customer orders. Based on requests from multiple FIF members, FIF proposes to submit a request to the regulators to extend the implementation date for this requirement to July 31, 2024. On November 5, 2021, FIF sent a survey to the members of the FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group requesting that FIF members provide additional detail relating to...

On November 17, FIF held a Webinar on Trading Digital Assets: Connectivity, Custody and Compliance. FIF Front Office Co-Chair Viktor Grinberg moderated a panel focusing on practical guidance to retail and institutional brokers and market makers on trading cryptocurrency and other digital assets, including connectivity to venues, custody of digital assets and determining which products can be traded and offered to customers. FIF would like to thank the panelists Alan Konevsky of tZERO, Mike Smith of IPC Network Services, Hongzhe Sun of Paxos and Dave Weisberger of CoinRoutes for taking the...

Please join us December 7 from 5:30-8:30pm ET for an in-person joint Holiday Party of FIF and FISD Members. This event will be strictly social and there will be no FIF panel discussion, therefore, there will be a $50 charge for all of those interested in attending. The event will take place at Tavern 29 in midtown Manhattan. This event is for FIF/FISD Members exclusively and there are only 95 spots available, so secure your spot today! After registering here, you will be sent to PayPal to pay the $50 entry fee for the event. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email us at...

FIF Tax Information Working Group. The Tax Information Reporting Working Group met for a spotlight presentation from Wolters Kluwer on SPAC tax issues. Email the program office for a copy of the presentation. FIF Front Office Committee. The FIF Front Office Committee reviewed applicable updates and notices from the SEC, FINRA, FINRA CAT and the equity and option exchanges. Please find this month's agenda here. FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group. The Working Group discussed issues and questions from FIF members relating to reporting partial cancels for exchange routes, stock stop and...

IPC, a provider of secure, compliant communications and multi-cloud connectivity solutions for the global financial markets, announced the launch of Connexus Crypto, an arbitrage enabling solution for cryptocurrency trading powered by the Connexus Cloud platform.  This solution is performance engineered to support complex trading strategies and provides low latency connectivity to global crypto-exchanges, enabling instant access to liquidity. Connexus Crypto is underpinned by IPC’s multi-cloud platform Connexus Cloud, an ecosystem that interconnects more than 7,000 diverse capital...

BXS announced the launch of an innovative new platform, Digital Currency Analysis (DCA), as an answer to the rapidly growing Digital Asset Industry.  Available to all existing BXS clients, this new tool provides a comprehensive view of Digital Asset and Cryptocurrency trading, in a consolidated, easy-to-use web portal. This new service is the latest innovation from BXS, a longtime leader in the data analytics and reporting space for the capital markets industry. BXS is now looking to take their expertise from traditional asset classes such as Equities and Options and apply their 20+...