On Tuesday, February 5, FIF staff along with a contingent of industry stakeholders, met with SEC Trading and Markets Staff on Rule 606 challenges. FIF reviewed Commission feedback from the in-person meeting on a 2/7 working group call.  If you were not able to join that call and would like more information on the discussion/follow-up items stemming out of the meeting with the SEC, please send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..   FIF sent comments to the Commission prior to the meeting on January 30, please...

FIF Cost Basis Working Group - Discussed 305c and tax reporting obligations for cryptocurrency. FIF CAT Working Group -  Provided an opportunity for members to ask questions on the implications of the termination of the plan processor, and understood next steps.  FIF also reviewed a short comment letter submitted to the SROs on the CAT transactional period. FIF SEC Rule 606 Working Group -  Reviewed the comment letter that was distributed to Trading and Markets Staff.  Reviewed Commission feedback from the in-person meeting on 2/5 on the scope of...

FactSet, a provider of integrated financial information and analytical applications, announced the expansion of the Open:FactSet Marketplace (OFM), with the addition of  investment signal data from IHS Markit. IHS Markit’s Research Signals offers financial and industry data that covers over 30,000 securities in 80 countries and has a history going back over 20 years.

FlexTrade’s multi-asset execution management system (EMS) for buy-side traders is now available on the cloud via Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to a story in The Trade news. The company said that FlexNOW helps reduce latency and onboarding time for clients and provides better reliability than many private data centers. FlexTrade describes its EMS as an out-of-the-box, broker neutral system which was developed to help buy-side traders who require a streamlined and multi-asset EMS. It is MiFID II compliant and handles equities, futures and options trading with...

Technology provider Capitolis has onboarded the foreign exchange (FX) prime brokerage businesses at Citi and HSBC to its recently launched platform for streamlined novation and automation, according to a story in The Trade news. Citi and HSBC are the first FX prime brokers to go live on the Capitolis Novation platform, which aims to reduce the time it takes for FX options novations to complete, benefiting both buy- and sell-side firms. The platform automates manual workflow in FX prime broking and bilateral trading.

Swiss exchange SIX plans to launch its new SDX trading platform using blockchain technology to speed up trading in the second half of this year, Chairman Romeo Lacher said. The new SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) will initially run parallel to the existing SIX platform, which involves three steps to complete a trade, often over several days. Two of those steps vanish in a blockchain distributed ledger, meaning a transaction can be completed in fractions of a second.  “The supervisory board will probably decide on the project in late summer,” Lacher said adding that the group was...

Vela, an independent provider of trading and market access technology for global multi-asset electronic trading, announced that it has been named Best DMA Offering in the Fund Technology and WSL Awards 2019 for the fourth year. The Fund Technology and WSL Awards 2019 recognize and reward providers catering to asset managers and institutional traders who have demonstrated a commitment to and delivery of exceptional customer service and innovative product development. Vela’s Direct Market Access (DMA) platform offers normalized entry, pre-trade risk, drop copy, full risk management...

FIF CAT Tech Spec Working Group - Continued our review of the scenerios portion of the spec. FIF Cybersecurity Working Group -  This month we quickly reviewed a New York Times article on two-factor authentication, followed by a deep-dive into Finra's 2018 Cybersecurity Report.  FIF Data & Technology Committee Meeting -  This month's spotlight topic was presented by Joe Bracco from MIAX who reviewed an article on the record breaking year the OCC saw in 2018 and introduced the group to MIAX Emerald.  We followed this presentation with our monthly Market...

FIF staff will be joined by a contingent of FIF industry members at meeting with SEC Trading and Markets Staff on Rule 606 challenges. FIF has been meeting weekly with the SEC Rule 606 Working Group to determine the significant challenges as well as propose a several recomendations.  FIF sent comments to the Commission on January 30, please find those comments here.