Nasdaq's SMARTS Launches Trade Surveillance Monitoring for Dark Pools

NEW YORK, Oct. 8, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ), the world's leading provider of trade surveillance technology to marketplaces, regulators and market participants, has officially launched new trade surveillance monitoring capabilities for dark trading activity alongside its award-winning SMARTS Trade Surveillance platform.

"Trade surveillance can no longer be limited to lit trading," said Rob Lang, Vice President, Business and Product Development, Risk & Surveillance Solutions, Nasdaq. "Regulators globally are taking a more active role in monitoring and enforcing greater transparency in the trading of listed instruments away from lit venues generally, and of trading behaviors within dark pools specifically. We see the need to address these new demands and support dark venue operators and those executing in the dark to boost their surveillance capabilities and help them stay in compliance."

The new module, SMARTS Surveillance for Dark Pools, helps Multilateral Trading Facilities (MTF), Alternative Trading Systems (ATS), Crossing Networks, and market participants internalizing order flow or trading in external dark venues to monitor for potentially abusive behavior taking place in the dark. Jurisdictions such as Hong Kong, Australia and Europe, amongst others, have already passed regulatory mandates in relation to dark trading. SMARTS Surveillance for Dark Pools will better position dark venue operators and participants to more effectively meet requirements and demonstrate a proactive approach to surveillance of dark trading.

• For dark venue operators, like MTFs and ATSs, these capabilities will enable them to monitor trading across all of their clients, like an exchange, to ensure market integrity. Using SMARTS, venue operators that also own broker-dealers would also be able to demonstrate that internal desks are not trading ahead of client orders on knowledge, further improving the integrity of the pool.
• For Crossing Networks or Systemic Internalization, the solution helps demonstrate system integrity in that the liquidity pool operates as advertised, in addition to helping identify potentially malicious behavior that is hidden in the network or any mispricing or fair pricing issues for trades that executed internally.
• For executing brokers, SMARTS Surveillance for Dark Pools enables firms the same cross-market, cross-asset monitoring and alerting capabilities as have proven successful in lit markets, with the ability to view dark executions within the full context of all of the markets traded.

SMARTS Surveillance for Dark Pools covers the full range of market manipulation and abuse behaviors from price manipulation to insider trading, front running, and cross-market (lit vs dark) manipulation, amongst others.

"In order to ensure integrity and compliance, dark venue operators and participants internalizing or crossing order flow, or externally participating in dark venues, need to have processes and systems in place to monitor activity for manipulative trading," said Michael O'Brien, Head of Product Development, SMARTS Trade Surveillance. "Not only does this support regulatory compliance needs, it is simply good business practice, particularly in a quickly evolving marketplace like dark pools."

SMARTS Surveillance solutions power monitoring capabilities for more than 100 market participants across 65 markets, and over 50 marketplaces and regulators.

For more information, visit business.nasdaq.com/tech.

About Nasdaq

Nasdaq (Nasdaq:NDAQ) is a leading provider of trading, clearing, exchange technology, listing, information and public company services across six continents. Through its diverse portfolio of solutions, Nasdaq enables customers to plan, optimize and execute their business vision with confidence, using proven technologies that provide transparency and insight for navigating today's global capital markets. As the creator of the world's first electronic stock market, its technology powers more than 70 marketplaces in 50 countries, and 1 in 10 of the world's securities transactions. Nasdaq is home to more than 3,600 listed companies with a market value of approximately $9.6 trillion and more than 10,000 corporate clients. To learn more, visit: nasdaq.com/ambition or business.nasdaq.com. 

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CONTACT: For Media Inquiries: Nasdaq: Ryan Wells ryan.wells@nasdaq.com Direct: +44 (0) 20 3753 2231 Mobile: +44 (0) 7809 596 390

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