FINRA Plans to Disseminate Odd Lot Transactions

In conjunction with the UTP Operating Committee (UTPOC) and Consolidated Tape Authority (CTA), FINRA will begin disseminating odd lot transactions via the Trade Data Dissemination Service (TDDS) on or about October 7, 2013. TDDS supports all publicly traded U.S. equities that are not NMS stocks, as defined in Rule 600(b) of SEC Regulation NMS and traded over the counter.

To support odd lot trades, FINRA will introduce a new sale condition modifier, Odd Lot Trade ("I"), which will be available to any participant to distinguish a trade resulting from a market center's execution in increments less than the defined round lot size. Odd Lot Trade transactions will be included in volume statistical calculations only. The Odd Lot Trade modifier value "I" will appear in the Sale Condition field of TDDS transaction messages.

Because TDDS supports only a one byte Sale Condition field, FINRA will disseminate all trades reported less than one round in size with the "I" sale condition modifier only. If a FINRA member firm were to enter an odd lot trade with multiple attributes (e.g., weighted-average price trades, prior reference price trades, sold out of sequence), FINRA would disseminate only the "I" sale condition modifier. Please refer to the TDDS Specification for details.

FINRA will provide additional details on testing and implementation dates in a subsequent technical notice.

Please contact FINRA Product Management at (866) 899-2107 with questions regarding this change.