November 1, 2013

Execs OK with New Dark Pool Rules

By

John D'Antona Jr.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority officially announced new disclosure rules for dark pools and industry executives are OK with them so far.

The rules stipulate that operators of these off-board trading venues report their weekly trading volume and the number of trades for each security. Traders Magazine previously reported that a rule was forthcoming and that a timeline was taking shape for release, comment and approval. Finra officially filed the rule with the Securities and Exchange Commission at the end of September.

John Donahue

[See Traders Magazine Finra Coverage]

"With regards to attributing trade data to certain ATSs, we're okay with it," said John Donahue, Fidelity Capital Markets' head of equity. "But it's a careful balance between when and how and in what form you make this data available to public and the Street. And at what frequency? We want to make sure that in a low ADV, small or mid-cap name that the distribution of trade data doesn't necessarily harm the ability of the customer to continue to find and source liquidity."

Finra has proposed Rule 4552, which will require each ATS to report to Finra volume information regarding transactions within the ATS in securities subject to Finra trade reporting obligations.

Finra will make the reported information for equity securities publicly available on a delayed basis. The regulator has proposed a two-week delay before publishing the reported data on Tier 1 NMS stocks and a four-week delay for all other NMS stocks and OTC equity securities. Furthermore, the proposed rule also requires each ATS to use a single, unique Market Participant Identifier (MPID) when reporting information to Finra.

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