Read the FCA’s Market Watch - Shield

WHY YOU NEED TO READ THE FCA’S MARKET WATCH The very idea of a publication or proposed set of guidelines issued by a regulatory authority induces a reflexive action that queues us up for a snooze fest.

POINTS FOR DISCUSSION As a standard best practice for your job sounds about as inviting as a long winter’s nap curled up beside a hibernating bear. No thank you!

BASIC INFORMATION The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) issues Market Watch as a regular publication for good reason: there is always something changing. Over 51,000 financial institutions are governed by the acts of the FCA. With all those regulations in play, Market Watch notifications are the only way to efficiently broadcast changes.

The FCA analyses suspicious transaction and order reports (STORs) and compares them against order book data collected from trading platforms across the UK.

NUMEROUS SURVEILLANCE ALGORITHMS HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED BY THE FC One of these recognises “spoofing” by traders. When the FCA detected aberrant behavior, they reported it to the firm which institutionalised enhanced monitoring and training for its trading staff. Market Watch 67 then goes on to publicly call out traders, including executives, for illicit activities. It’s not a list that you want to be on – even if the whole industry isn’t actively reading the publication – because there is certainly a large cohort that does keep up with it.

MARKET WATCH 68 Begins with a rather ominous proclamation: “We are concerned that requirements for market abuse surveillance are still not being fully met, 5 years after the introduction of the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR) in 2016.” With an opener like that, you just know that changes are ahead – and they’re not going to be good. The agency has identified some gaps in market abuse surveillance for some asset classes.

AREA OF INTEREST TO THE FCA Record keeping is an obvious aspect of compliance.

However, if the task is not automated, and the broker is not upholding their responsibilities to enter all the communication associated with a trading event (or nontrading event), nefarious behavior may go undetected.

As the usage of web-based user interface (UI) portals increases, so does the potential for market abuse.

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Thankyou For Watching!