The FIF Back Office Committee will meet on Tuesday April 19 at 11am ET to review applicable FICC, DTC, NSCC, SEC, MSRB, OCC, IRS and FINRA updates during the past month.

The FIF Short Sales/Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group will meet on Thursday April 14, 2022 at 11am ET to continue its review of a draft comment letter on the SEC’s recent proposal to mandate a new buy to cover order marker. The Working Group also will discuss other issues identified by FIF members relating to the SEC’s recent rule proposal on Short Position and Short Activity Reporting by Institutional Investment Managers.

The FIF Rule 606 Working Group will meet on Thursday April 14, 2022 at 2pm ET to discuss recent guidance from the SEC staff relating to Rule 606 reporting for notional value orders that include fractional shares. The Working Group also will provide an update on a recent discussion with FINRA relating to its proposal to require Rule 606-type disclosures for routing in OTC equities.

On Friday April 8, 2022, FINRA CAT published a significant number of updates to the CAIS Technical Specifications. The CAIS Working Group call for this Wednesday at 11 am will focus on these updates. In addition, starting on Monday April 18 at 11 am, FIF will schedule weekly calls to review these updates to the Technical Specifications. These Monday calls will be in addition to the regularly scheduled Wednesday and Friday CAIS calls and will continue until the review of these updates has been completed. The CAIS call for Friday April 15 is cancelled because of Good Friday.

On Tuesday April 5, 2022 at 3pm ET, Wayne Aaron and David Soden of the Vedder Price law firm will discuss the SEC’s recent rule proposal on “Short Position and Short Activity Reporting by Institutional Investment Managers”. Under the rule proposal, any firm buying or selling for its own account or exercising investment discretion with respect to the account of any other person and exceeding a specified reporting threshold would be required to report on a monthly basis specified short position and short activity data for equity securities. The rule proposal also proposes a new “buy to cover” order marking requirement, and proposes amendments to the CAT NMS Plan to require the reporting of “buy to cover” order marking information and reliance on the bona fide market making exception in the SEC’s short sale rules. FIF has invited the members of the FIF Short Sales/Reg SHO/Short Interest Reporting Working Group, the Compliance Working Group and the Front Office Committee to participate on this call. If you are not a member of any of these groups and would like to attend this presentation, please send a note to fifinfo@fif.com.