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While the industry gears up for the beginning of testing for the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) this December, there are still some that want to derail the project.  After the SRO’s finally booted Thesys Technologies from the project, completion of the CAT seemed to be gaining momentum. FINRA has taken over production of the CAT and the CAT NMS Plan has produced what looks to be a reasonable timeline However, there are those that continue to balk at the idea of having personally identifiable information (PII) reside in the CAT database.  The latest objector is Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) who just sent (more…)

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Last month we wrote about a new order routing strategy from Nasdaq called SCAR  and summarized it as: “SCAR can be combined with all sorts or order types, and Times-In-Force. SCAR allows exchange members to seek liquidity on Nasdaq, and its sister exchanges (BX and PSX). Any unexecuted orders will rest on Nasdaq and not route out. It will not route to clear a locking exchange. It will therefore incur less take fees.” We have since learned a little more about SCAR from a new Nasdaq filing which goes into detail on its pricing. Nasdaq’s objective appears to be to grow its (more…)