OATS Report - February 12, 2002

February 12, 2002

When a firm electronically routes an order to another firm, the routing firm must pass a Routed Order ID to the firm receiving the order. As defined in the OATS Reporting Technical Specifications, the Routed Order ID is an identifier assigned to an order by the order routing firm when the order is routed. It is the Receiving firm's responsibility to identify, record and report on its New Order Report the identical Routed Order ID electronically passed to it from the Routing Firm.

A Routed Order ID may be the same Order ID reported to OATS when the order was received or it may be another Order ID assigned by the routing firm when the order was routed, such as a Branch/Sequence Number. The Routed Order ID field is an alphanumeric field that can be up to 20 characters in length. If multiple orders are routed to the same destination within the same second, the Routed Order ID passed to the receiving firm must be different for each route.

It has come to the attention of Market Regulation Department Staff that receiving firms may not be correctly reporting the Routed Order ID to OATS. In many instances firms that receive an electronically routed order are not populating the Routed Order ID on their New Order Report with the identical Routed Order ID provided by the routing firm on its Route Report. Rather, some receiving firms are populating the Routed Order ID field on their New Order Reports with a random firm generated ID. This is not in keeping with OATS requirements.

Routing firms should note the following requirements for passing the Routed Order ID to the receiving firm:

  1. If the order is routed electronically to a Nasdaq execution system (i.e.SOES, SuperSOES, Primex and SelectNet), the routing firm must provide a Routed Order ID to the execution system using the Branch/Sequence Number field in the input format.
  2. If the order is routed to a non-member, the routing firm may report the MPID of the non-member to the extent one exists, as well as, the Routed Order ID.


As noted above, receiving firms should include the Routed Order ID on the New Order Report; ECNs are not required to report the Routed Order ID at this time.

When the Routed Order ID is not properly passed and reported, the NASD is unable to complete the order lifecycle. Market Regulation Staff routinely review the accuracy of Routed Order IDs and future instances of improper Routed Order ID reporting may result in compliance action being taken against the firm. If another entity or member is reporting on your behalf you must verify that it is properly capturing and reporting the correct Routed Order ID.

Should you have questions about this article, please contact the Gateway Business Applications Support group at (800) 321-NASD (Listen to the prompts for "Business" and "OATS").