[ N E W S
R E V I E W ]
A roundtable hosted by the SEC with high-
profile market participants highlighted just how
divided Wall Street and regulated exchanges
are on the issue of market data and access
to exchanges, writes Hayley McDowell.
O
n 25 October 2018, major US exchange
operators went head-to-head with Wall
Street during a roundtable discussion
hosted by the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission (SEC), as part of a two-day event on
an issue at the heart of market controversy:
Exchange market data and access fees.
At the heart of the debate are the SIPs – or
Securities Information Processor feeds – which
are real-time consolidated feeds of trade and
quote data, including ‘top of book’ quotes for
stocks consisting of each exchange’s best bid
price, thus providing key information on the
national best bid and offer (NBBO) for NMS
stocks. Alongside this, exchange operators offer
direct data feeds to subscribers which contain
data on trades, quotes and prices other than the
best bid and offer, known as the ‘depth of book’
information.
Investment banks, broker-dealers and trading
firms argue that SIP and direct data feeds are
grossly overpriced considering how little they
allegedly cost to produce and how important
they are in terms of regulatory compliance. The
first roundtable of the day included partici-
pants Doug Cifu, CEO of Virtu Financial, Chris
Concannon, president and COO of Cboe Global
Markets, Mehmet Kinak, the global head of
systematic trading and market structure at T.
Rowe Price, and Brad Katsuyama, co-founder
and CEO of Investors Exchange (IEX). Those
panellists not representing exchange opera-
tors, with the exception of IEX’s Katsuyama,
heatedly argued that market participants cannot
rely solely on the SIP data, and therefore must
Issue 58 // TheTradeNews.com // 43