The Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) oversees the dissemination of real-time

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct excha ...

and

quote Quote is a hypernym of quotation, as the repetition or copy of a prior statement or thought. Quotation marks are punctuation marks that indicate a quotation. Both ''quotation'' and ''quotation marks'' are sometimes abbreviated as "quote(s)". C ...

information (

market data ''For market data as used in marketing, see marketing information system'' In finance, market data is price and other related data for a financial instrument reported by a trading venue such as a stock exchange. Market data allows traders and ...

) in

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...

(NYSE) and

American Stock Exchange NYSE American, formerly known as the American Stock Exchange (AMEX), and more recently as NYSE MKT, is an American stock exchange situated in New York City. AMEX was previously a mutual organization, owned by its members. Until 1953, it was know ...

(AMEX) listed securities (

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

s and bonds). It is currently chaired by Emily Kasparov of the Chicago Stock Exchange, the first woman and the youngest chair elected to the position. CTA manages two

Plans A plan is typically any diagram or list of steps with details of timing and resources, used to achieve an objective to do something. It is commonly understood as a temporal set of intended actions through which one expects to achieve a goal. ...

to govern the collection, processing and dissemination of trade and quote data: the Consolidated Tape Plan, which governs trades, and the Consolidated Quotation Plan, which governs quotes. The Plans were filed with and approved by the

Securities and Exchange Commission The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market ...

(SEC) in accordance with Section 11A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Since the late 1970s, all SEC-registered exchanges and market centers that trade NYSE or AMEX-listed securities send their trades and quotes to a central consolidator where the

Consolidated Tape System The Consolidated Tape System (CTS) is the electronic service, introduced in April 1976, that provides last sale and trade data for issues admitted to dealings on the American Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, and U.S. regional stock exchan ...

(CTS) and

Consolidated Quotation System The Consolidated Quotation System (CQS) is the electronic service that provides financial quote, quotation information for stock traded on the American Stock Exchange, New York Stock Exchange, and other regional stock exchanges in the United State ...

(CQS) data streams are produced and distributed worldwide. The CTA is the operating authority for CQS and CTS.

Participant Exchanges

The current Participants include: *

(AMEX), acquired by NYSE *

Boston Stock Exchange The Boston Stock Exchange (now NASDAQ BX, formerly ''BSE'') is a regional stock exchange located in Boston, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1834, making it the third-oldest stock exchange in the United States. On October 2, 2007, NASDAQ agreed ...

(BSE) *

Chicago Board Options Exchange The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), located at 433 West Van Buren Street in Chicago, is the largest U.S. options exchange with an annual trading volume of around 1.27 billion at the end of 2014. CBOE offers options on over 2,200 compani ...

(CBOE) *

Chicago Stock Exchange NYSE Chicago, formerly known as the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX), is a stock exchange in Chicago, Illinois, US. The exchange is a national securities exchange and self-regulatory organization, which operates under the oversight of the U.S. S ...

(CHX) *

Financial Industry Regulatory Authority The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is a private American corporation that acts as a self-regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates member brokerage firms and exchange markets. FINRA is the successor to the National Associati ...

(FINRA) *

International Securities Exchange International Securities Exchange Holdings, Inc. (ISE) is a wholly owned subsidiary of American multinational financial services corporation Nasdaq, Inc. It is a member of the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC) and the Options Industry Council ( ...

(ISE) *

Nasdaq Stock Market The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

(NASDAQ) * National Stock Exchange (NSX), acquired by NYSE *

(NYSE) *

NYSE Arca NYSE Arca, previously known as ArcaEx, an abbreviation of Archipelago Exchange, is an exchange on which both stocks and options are traded. It was owned by Intercontinental Exchange. It merged with the New York Stock Exchange in 2006 and now op ...

, and *

Philadelphia Stock Exchange Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX), now known as Nasdaq PHLX, is the first stock exchange established in the United States and the oldest stock exchange in the nation. The exchange is owned by Nasdaq, which acquired it in 2007 for $652 million, a ...

(PHLX) * Bats Exchange ( BATS BATSY EDGA EDGX), acquired by CBOE * The Investors Exchange (IEX)

Acquisition and Distribution of Market Data

The New York Stock Exchange is the Administrator of Network A, which includes NYSE-listed securities, and the American Stock Exchange is the Administrator of Network B, which includes AMEX-listed securities. CTS and CQS receive trade and quote information, respectively from NYSE, AMEX, and the other regional market centers using a standard

message A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. A ...

format. Each system validates its respective message format, verifies the information against its databases (e.g., valid

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

, etc.), consolidates the information with the other market centers' information, and disseminates the information to the data recipients in its respective common standard message format via the

IP multicast IP multicast is a method of sending Internet Protocol (IP) datagrams to a group of interested receivers in a single transmission. It is the IP-specific form of multicast and is used for streaming media and other network applications. It uses spec ...

network. Included in every trade and quote message is a

timestamp A timestamp is a sequence of characters or encoded information identifying when a certain event occurred, usually giving date and time of day, sometimes accurate to a small fraction of a second. Timestamps do not have to be based on some absolut ...

which represents the time that the message is disseminated. Every trade and quote is stored in the system for both

on-line In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...

and after hours processing. Each system maintains a master

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...

by symbol. CTS maintains in its database, by symbol, a consolidated high, low, last price and volume; and for each market center that trades that symbol, the market’s last sale and volume information. This information is updated with each trade. Market centers are required, as authorizing

self-regulatory organization A self-regulatory organization (SRO) is an organization that exercises some degree of regulatory authority over an industry or profession. The regulatory authority could exist in place of government regulation, or applied in addition to governmen ...

s (SROs) per the CTA Plan, to report their trade activity within 90 seconds of execution time to CTS; otherwise the trade report must be designated as a late report. It is the responsibility of the SRO to determine when a trade is late. Late trades do not impact the national last sale price. CTS provides an automated correction processing capability in the event that a market center incorrectly reported its information. When a market center issues a correction message, CTS processes the correction and disseminates the revised trade report along with the updated consolidated and market center information that is maintained in the database. CTS also disseminates at

End of Day End of day (EOD), end of business (EOB), close of business (COB), close of play (COP) or end of play (EOP) is the end of the trading day in financial markets, the point when trading ceases. In some markets it is actually defined as the point in ...

, closing messages that provide summary information from its database for each listed stock. For every quote message received from a market center, CQS calculates a

National Best Bid and Offer National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) is a regulation by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission that requires brokers to execute customer trades at the best available (lowest) ask price when buying securities, and the best available (hi ...

(NBBO) based on a price, size and time priority scheme. If the quote is a NASDAQ

market maker A market maker or liquidity provider is a company or an individual that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a tradable asset held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the ''bid–ask spread'', or ''turn.'' The benefit to the firm is that it ...

quote, CQS also calculates a NASDAQ BBO. CQS disseminates the Market center's

root In vascular plants, the roots are the organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often below the sur ...

quote with an appendage that includes the National and NASDAQ BBOs. In the event that a market center is experiencing technical difficulties in providing quote information, CQS also has a facility that, at the direction of the market center, disseminates zero quotes in its securities thus eliminating any stale quotes and taking that market center out of the BBO calculations.

Technology Infrastructure

Both the CTS and the CQS systems are operated on

fault tolerant Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

computer platforms at different physical computer sites; CTS is operated at CTA’s complex in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

; CQS is operated at CTA’s complex in lower

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, thereby providing redundancy in the event of a site disaster. If a site disaster should occur at either location, all of the computer processing would be transferred to the surviving site at reduced capacity. CTS and CQS receive their data from the market centers over network-based

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

connections. Each market center has redundant communication paths into the two operating environments and each uses diverse common telephone carriers to send its trade and quote data to the

Securities Industry Automation Corporation The Securities Industry Automation Corporation (SIAC) is a subsidiary of the NYSE Euronext. Its purpose is to provide technical services for the exchanges themselves, members and other financial institutions. In this role, SIAC provides the comput ...

(SIAC). SIAC simultaneously distributes, via IP multicast, trade and quote information to the CTS and CQS subscribers from both sites. Independent of where the system is physically located (i.e., in lower Manhattan or in Brooklyn), both streams of data are simultaneously distributed out of both sites using an SIAC-developed Multicast Packet Replicator (MPR) thus providing "live" redundant

streams A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream ...

to data recipients. The use of IP multicast, introduced to the market data industry in 1997, was the first widespread implementation of such technology. SIAC's design and implementation of this technology has been recognized and accepted into the permanent archives of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

. This technology allows trade and quote data to be distributed in a

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

mode over a

network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

and eliminates any dependency where one data recipient having a problem might impact another data recipient. In situations where a data recipient has experienced

data loss Data loss is an error condition in information systems in which information is destroyed by failures (like failed spindle motors or head crashes on hard drives) or neglect (like mishandling, careless handling or storage under unsuitable conditions) ...

in receiving the information (e.g., due to a system problem at the receiving site) an automated retransmission facility is available to allow that data recipient to automatically request and receive

retransmissions.

References

{{reflist Finance in the United States Self-regulatory organizations in the United States Computer networking

Participant Exchanges

Acquisition and Distribution of Market Data

Technology Infrastructure

See also

References