Group Co.
CAT NMS Provides Progress Update on the Consolidated Audit Trail
Traders Magazine Online News, June 25, 2018
The Consolidated Audit Trail NMS, LLC (CAT NMS) today reports on progress towards completing infrastructure milestones for the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT). The CAT will enable exchanges, FINRA (together, the SROs) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to more efficiently track securities trading activity throughout U.S. markets by collecting how orders are processed, and trades executed.
The CAT will allow regulators, among other things, to improve securities' market surveillance by creating an extensive audit trail of customer and order event information for all orders in U.S. exchange-listed and over-the-counter equity securities across all markets and trading venues. The CAT will also collect all such data for exchange-listed options contracts. When complete, the CAT will ingest approximately 58 billion records per day to be the world's largest data repository of information on securities transactions, tracking all orders throughout their life cycle.
CAT NMS shares the view of SEC Chairman Clayton that completing the CAT as soon as practicable is essential and is working intensively towards the November 2018 working deadline for initial implementation -- alongside the Plan Processor, Thesys CAT LLC, and all other stakeholders.
The SROs are working with key market participants, such as the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the Financial Information Forum (FIF), the Security Traders Association (STA) and the SEC to develop and propose a phased reporting approach for industry members. The parties are also discussing possible approaches to better leverage existing industry reporting protocols.
Also, on June 7, the SROs voted to appoint a CAT Leadership Team to further enhance the governance and project management of CAT, which includes a lead and three additional SRO members to provide expertise in specific areas.
Other progress this year on the CAT includes:
- January: Appointed Chairs for project working group committees
- February: Thesys CAT publishes iterative draft of Industry Member Tech Specs
- February – May: Interpretive FAQs published
- March: Participants and Thesys CAT select and hire Chief Information Security Officer
- May: Operating Committee approves CAT system security plan, national securities exchanges submit test data and begin testing User Access Tools
- Coming June 28: Further updates expected during the next monthly Industry Outreach Webinar which is open to the media
About CAT NMS, LLC
CAT NMS, LLC was formed by the national securities exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (collectively, the "Participants") to implement the requirements of SEC Rule 613. SEC Rule 613, which was adopted in July 2012, requires the Participants to jointly submit to the SEC a national market system plan ("NMS Plan") to create, implement and maintain the CAT. The SEC approved the CAT NMS Plan on November 15, 2016. Once implemented, the CAT will facilitate regulatory surveillance by creating an extensive audit trail that will capture customer and order event information for orders in NMS securities across all markets, from the time of order inception through routing, cancellation, modification or execution, in a single, consolidated source. When complete, the CAT will be the world's largest data repository for securities transactions. More information can be found at www.catnmsplan.com/
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