By Bradley Hope and Michael Calia
Major banks had the largest amounts of trades and shares in
alternative trading systems, according to a first-time data release
of weekly data required under new disclosure requirements from the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
Finra said UBSA UBS Securities LLC had the most total trades, at
about 2.3 million. MLIX Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith
Inc. and CROS Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC followed with
nearly 2.2 million total trades each. LATS Barclays Capital Inc.
had about 1.7 million total trades.
Under a new rule intended to make these trading venues less
opaque, banks operating the lightly regulated dark pools are now
required to report market data on a weekly basis to Finra, Wall
Street's industry financed regulator. Finra in turn publishes some
of the data to its website.
Information that must be reported under the rule includes total
shares traded and total trading volume on each of the roughly 40
dark pools, also referred to alternative trading systems.
Finra said CROS Credit Suisse Securities (USA) was highest in
total number of shares traded with 373.6 million. Next were LATS
Barclays Capital Inc. with 305.5 million and UBSA UBS Securities
LLC with 278.2 million.
Bank of America's MLIX Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith
had a total share count of 213.9 million.
The bank earlier reported a total that was twice as high, with a
spokesman for the bank saying it had submitted incorrect trading
data to regulators during the initial round of dark-pool data
collection.
In January, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the
new Finra rule requiring each alternative trading system, or ATS,
to report weekly trading data.
The ATS reporting requirement was implemented beginning May 12,
2014.
The first ATS reports, for the week of May 12 through May 16,
were due by May 28.
The data are aggregated on a weekly basis, the agency said on
its website.
Write to Bradley Hope at bradley.hope@wsj.com and Michael Calia
at michael.calia@wsj.com
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