Reg NMS Test Set for Saturday, June 30th

An industry-wide test will be conducted for Regulation NMS on Saturday, June 30. Brokers that participate can test their Reg NMS compliant trading systems with all the automated trading centers. When the Pilot Stocks Phase starts on July 9th all the broker dealers will have to be in compliance with Reg NMS for 249 stocks.All of the major exchanges are participating, according to Tom Jordan, president and CEO of Jordan and Jordan, who moderated a conference session on Reg NMS at the SIFMA conference last week. "Nasdaq will have their own coordinated body as will all the other centers including the NYSE," said Jordan, who noted that he was still waiting to hear from the NSX, but expected them to participate. SIFMA and the Financial Information Forum (FIF) had confirmations from all the trading centers, according to Jordan.

At a briefing three weeks ago, Chris Concannon, EVP of Nasdaq Transaction Services, said Nasdaq had coordinated the industry-wide test. The decision to have the test was driven by the customer base, he said.

"All the exchanges had their own type of testing, there's wasn't a coordinated industry-wide test," said Concannon at the briefing earlier this month. "We reached out to the other exchanges, got verbal agreements from all the other exchanges, ECNs and NASD, "he said. "They could test connectivity, new sweep and print functionality and any type of new code functionality they rolled in for Reg NMS," said Concannon.

With Reg NMS the key thing is "making sure they can all interact, protecting all these quotes," said Adam Nunes, VP Nasdaq Transaction Services and head of Nasdaq Options Market at the briefing. "It's important to get everyone in and simulate a real environment," said Nunes. Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio