FIF CAT Tech Specs Working Group. The CAT Tech Specs Working Group discussed FIF Member comments and questions relating to DMA rejected routes, reporting quantity for Multi-Leg orders, and reporting priceType for Multi-Leg orders. The Working Group discussed issues and questions raised by FIF members relating to the CenturyLink/Lumen failover, the FCUS, FDVP, FCSF and FDVF allocationTypes, a rejected route scenario involving two brokers and an exchange, DAY orders that can be executed in foreign venues on T+2, timestamp granularity, and the “O” senderType. The Working Group discussed the...

Jordan & Jordan President and CEO, Tom Jordan, has written an article on the potential follow-up activities to the GameStop Congressional hearings. Please find Tom's LinkedIn article here: Game Stopped: Put Odd Lots on the Tape

Toronto-Dominion Bank is acquiring electronic fixed-income trading company Headlands Tech Global Markets LLC in an attempt to further expand into municipal and corporate bond markets as well as bring a higher degree of automation to its existing bond-trading platform. Chicago-based Headlands owns proprietary trading software that facilitates the electronic trading of municipal and corporate bonds. All 15 of Headlands’ employees, including co-chief executives Martin Mannion and Matthew Schrager, will join TD when the deal closes. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2021, subject...

BNP Paribas announced that it has expanded its FX digital trading assistant ALiX across the full FX product suite on the bank’s advanced FX trading platform, Cortex FX. The bank first launched the digital trading assistant in September 2019. According to the official press release, ALiX can now facilitate clients across the full FX product suite, including spot, forwards, swaps, options and orders. In September 2019, ALiX was only available on the algo trades. BNP Paribas mentioned that the bank has structured ALiX to pack all the power of Cortex FX into one small widget that fits...

Bloomberg has partnered with investment bank Standard Chartered to introduce electronic trading workflow for accessing Korea treasury bond liquidity on the Terminal. The partnership aims to give investors the ability to stage, monitor, trade, process and allocate trades in Korean treasury bonds via an electronic workflow through Bloomberg’s electronic trading offering. The first electronic trade has already been completed on Bloomberg between the bank and a global investor on the buy-side. Standard Chartered added it is one of the largest primary dealers in Korea treasury bonds and it is...

Cboe Global Markets, Inc. announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Chi-X Asia Pacific Holdings, Ltd., an alternative market operator and provider of innovative market solutions, from J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC. This acquisition will provide Cboe with a single point of entry into two key capital markets – Australia and Japan – to help enable it to expand its global equities business into Asia Pacific, bring other products and services to the region, and further expand access to its unique proprietary product suite in the region. The transaction...

Broker-dealer Cowen has launched an algorithmic trading tool aimed at helping institutional clients navigate market dynamics caused by increased volumes of retail trading.  Named Inaccessible Liquidity Adjustment, the tool offers clients the option to adjust their trading for liquidity deemed inaccessible, often due to retail trading activity, on a single-stock basis as they execute orders in the broker’s algorithms. It calculates the percentage of inaccessible liquidity for each US security on a weekly basis using the previous three months of Financial Industry Regulatory...

Broadridge Financial Solutions has expanded its European fund regulatory reporting solution with the integration of transaction cost calculation services from financial products, trading and market-making services provider Virtu Financial. The Broadridge and Virtu partnership will provide a solution for asset managers to disclose transaction costs as they fulfil the second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and Packaged Retail Investment and Insurance-based Products (PRIIPs) fund reporting requirements. MiFID II and PRIIPs have required assets managers to disclose...

Cybersecurity and Emerging Technology Working Groups. On March 23, Josh Burns of CitiHub will present on Secrets Management in the Financial Industry Using a Hashicorp Vault Implementation. Data and Technology Working Group. On March 31, Brian Faughnan of SIAC will discuss the Pillar migration. Tax Information Reporting Working Group. On April 29, Stevie Conlon and colleagues at Wolters Kluwer will present Part 2 of their Spotlight on Virtual Currency.