U.S. equity markets pick tech firm to build consolidated audit trail
The U.S. equity markets have moved a step closer to establishing a consolidated audit trail for equities and equity options that will track all orders throughout their lifecycle, addressing a major weakness in the ability of regulators to monitor these markets.
On Jan. 17, the consortium of market regulators that is overseeing the project announced the selection of Thesys Technologies, a trading technology firm based in New Jersey, to build the new system. The consortium includes the regulatory arms of exchanges such as Bats, CBOE, Nasdaq and NYSE.
Thesys provides trade surveillance tools, low latency trading platforms, and big data analytical tools. It currently provides the technology underpinning the Midas market surveillance tool used by the Securities and Exchange Commission, For the audit trail project, Thesys will serve as the prime contractor, with IBM, Rosenblatt Securities and Latham & Watkins serving as partners.
The CAT is intended to allow regulators track trading activity across all U.S. markets. When complete, it will be the world's largest data repository for securities transactions, tracking approximately 58 billion records of orders, executions and quote life-cycles for equities and options markets on a daily basis.
