“This Chevron stuff is so silly,” a contact texted. “These companies think they now have a magic ace card.”

She had just read our story published yesterday about the Consolidated Audit Trail, aka the CAT, which may be in peril following the US Supreme Court’s striking down of the Chevron deference, a legal precedent that had allowed government agencies to interpret Congressional legislation when it came to regulating their specific sectors for the last 40 years.

“Well, they kinda do,” I replied.

And so here we are again, faced with Trump: The Sequel. I saw the first one, and I didn’t like the ending.

It's unbelievable that this wasn't the end for him. pic.twitter.com/pC8CysKbiy

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) November 5, 2024

Clearly, the American electorate was reading our coverage about onerous rules, pesky explainability, and technical fighting, and decided enough was enough. Deregulation is in! It’s chic. It’s so back. So says Elon Musk, the new co-head of the newly imagined, perhaps ultimately imaginary, deeply Orwellian, can’t-believe-it’s-not-satire, Department of Government Efficiency.

The DOGE co-master tweeted on Wednesday that the US “finally [has] a mandate to delete the mountain of choking regulations that do not serve the greater good.” During an interview with the loony tune that even Fox News unceremoniously kicked to the curb, Tucker Carlson, Musk questioned whether we really need those 428 federal agencies because he’s never even heard of some of them.

“We should be able to get away with 99 agencies,” he added. Completely arbitrary! Backed by nothing except personal anecdote and vibes! Beautiful! I love living in the Information Age.

In theory, Chevron’s presence or lack thereof doesn’t actually touch the CAT, which is now up and running after a treacherous development that spanned 14 years. The Securities and Exchange Commission has said the case that ultimately undid Chevron is irrelevant, as the Commission didn’t rely on nor ask for deference to create the CAT. But Citadel Securities and the American Securities Association apparently saw it differently when, in September, the pair filed an injunction in the US Court of Appeals to stop the SEC from progressing to the next stage of the surveillance tool’s funding model: transferring fees from exchanges and self-regulatory organizations—which have so far footed the bill—to investors and broker-dealers.

And beyond the sticking point of cost, many in the industry take umbrage with CAT’s data collection and storage—one person interviewed for our story called it a “disturbing intrusion” upon investor privacy—and others question its necessity at all.

But it may not actually matter that Chevron isn’t or shouldn’t be in play here. As my contact said, “It’s about the undermining of the admin state, and they certainly have the political backing for that.”

And if a little less oversight means people can do a little more crime, it’s not like anyone’s ever died from deregulation.

London fire:
-engulfs 27-story Grenfell Tower
-200 firefighters at scene
-2 people treated for smoke inhalation https://t.co/TJEjcLyshk pic.twitter.com/psHbfUaVQa

— Bloomberg (@business) June 14, 2017

What you might have missed

Chief data officers must ‘get it done’—but differ on what that means (Link to story)

The voices are back.

Following Anthony Malakian’s earlier Voice of the CTO series, which examined the spending plans of bank technology leaders, he has teamed up with Max Bowie to present the first of a new Voice of the CDO series, which—you guessed it—examines the major trends affecting data managers in the capital markets.

Between this past August and October, Tony and Max spoke to CDOs from eight tier-one international banks and asset managers. In this first story of the new series, CDOs from two US G-Sibs delve into the topics of data governance and data quality—terms that would make for a nice drinking game at any industry conference.

But one of the CDOs provided this refreshingly honest quote: “Data quality is a fake term; the only reason people talk about data quality is because they didn’t give a shit about it when they put it in the database in the first place.”

The same source, who seems like someone you’d want to hang out with, actually wants CDOs to have to worry less about governance and more about adding value by making sure that other departments—from risk managers to AI engineers to portfolio managers—are adequately proficient in data handling. After all, policy enforcement is boring. But it takes a village to raise a bank.

Waters Wavelength Ep. 295: Vision57’s Steve Grob (Link to podcast)

Did you know we have a new podcast every week? For this one, Tony sat down with Steve Grob, founder of fintech consultancy Vision57, to chat about all things order management systems. Grob was a long-time executive at OMS provider Fidessa, which was bought by Ion Group in a not-so-fun acquisition that saw hundreds of employees abandon the ship.

Additionally, if you care about desktop application interoperability—another corner of the fintech market that’s seen its fair share of drama—you don’t want to miss this one.

Other stories from WatersTechnology this week

• S&P debuts GenAI ‘Document Intelligence’ for Capital IQ (Link)
• In a world of data-cost overruns, inventory systems are increasingly necessary (Link)

From around the industry

FBI searches home of founder of Polymarket betting website (Link)

Shayne Coplan, the founder of betting website Polymarket, had his home raided by FBI agents Wednesday morning. The New York Times reported that the investigation appears focused on whether Coplan, 26, ran Polymarket as an unlicensed commodities exchange, allowing users to place bets—mostly on the odds of the recent presidential election—in violation of a settlement with the US government.

I include this one because I’ve always been interested in the idea of six degrees of separation, the concept that you are connected to everyone on Earth by no more than six intermediaries. And it works here! Our very own Nyela Graham, also 26, went to high school with Coplan. Small world, innit.

SIX could withdraw from EuroCTP consortium following Aquis deal (Link)

The Trade reported that Swiss exchange group SIX intends to withdraw from EuroCTP, the consortium for the European equity consolidated tape provider (CTP) role that SIX is participating in, if Aquis Exchange continues to explore its own joint bid with CBOE to become the CTP itself. The news followed SIX’s announcement that it is set to acquire Aquis.

In early October, WatersTechnology first broke the news that Aquis and Cboe were involved in their own bid, which is named SimpliCT and based in the Netherlands. As it stands, the only public bidders for the gig are SimpliCT and EuroCTP, which is backed by 14 European exchange groups.

A third contender, a consortium called Adamantia, dropped out of the running when it decided that an equity tape would only be commercially viable if it included substantial pre-trade data, an option that was eventually ruled out by European lawmakers in a compromise agreement.

The crypto world is preparing for a renaissance under Trump (Link)

From the Wall Street Journal.

Reminds me of this.

In other news

• SpiderRock Technology Solutions, a provider of options trading technology, unveiled the latest version of its flagship platform, SpiderRock Connect. This global trading platform supporting US and EU derivative instruments includes several major feature upgrades, runs in next-generation datacenters that are proximity-located to exchange matching engines, and provides access to an entirely new equity options alternative trading system called SpiderRock ATS.
• Execution venue Liquidnet has released SmartDark, its latest algorithm for its equities platform, designed to enhance how institutional traders can execute their trades through prioritized routing with larger executions and better price stability. Available in the US, SmartDark incorporates a variety of yield and quality metrics to give traders a blend of targeted liquidity-seeking strategy and maximum liquidity exposure.
• ACA Group, a supplier of governance, risk, and compliance solutions to financial services firms, has acquired Finop Consulting, a financial and operations principal outsourcing firm for broker-dealers. The acquisition enhances ACA’s ability to offer a wider set of FinOps services to its existing and future broker-dealer clients as part of ACA Signature, the firm’s regulatory compliance solution.
• Tradeweb, operator of electronic marketplaces for rates, credit, equities, and money markets, and Tokyo Stock Exchange are collaborating to offer institutional investors enhanced access to liquidity in Japanese exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The launch of a new direct link between Tradeweb and TSE’s RFQ platform, Conneqtor, allows Tradeweb’s buy-side clients to include Conneqtor liquidity providers when launching a trade inquiry on the Tradeweb Japan-listed ETF marketplace. Global X Japan executed the first transaction using this new connectivity. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by FallingInSociety (@fallinginsociety)

One of the reasons we revamped our “This Week” posts into the “Waters Cooler” is to try to reduce the amount of soulless, dull, and often meaningless, industry jargon you get in a press release. I’m often struck by the ability some people have to take information that can be concretely explained in 100 words or less and turn it into 1,000 or more. Struck, as one is by lightning.