The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board yesterday filed a proposal with the Securities and Exchange Commission to create a real-time transaction price service to provide pricing and other real-time data from municipal securities trades to information vendors and other subscribers for an annual fee of $5,000, beginning Jan 1.
The Bond Market Association said it supports the MSRB proposal and will provide the boards data to retail investors and others for free on its Web site, www.investinginbonds.com.
The Bond Market Association applauds the MSRBs decision to make real-time municipal bond transaction information available for a fee that will ensure broad availability of price data at a reasonable cost, said TBMA president Micah S. Green. By designing the fee structure in this manner, the MSRB is promoting access to data that helps investors, especially retail investors, make-well informed investing decisions.
The new reporting system is designed to increase price transparency in the muni market and to enhance the surveillance database and audit trail used by the SEC and National Association of Securities Dealers to enforce fair pricing and other requirements in the market. The board plans to begin its system on Jan. 1.
Under the system, broker-dealers will be required to report pricing and other data from their municipal securities trades to the Fixed Income Clearing Corp. within 15 minutes of when those trades occur. The FICC will make sure the trades are valid and that the information from both sides of inter-dealer trades is the same, and will then transmit the data to the MSRB. The board will forward the data to its subscribers as soon as possible.
The MSRB told the SEC that it plans to send the real-time data to subscribers in the form of messages available over the Internet or by leased line at the subscribers option. The board will also provide subscribers with a Day Replay file containing all of the messages sent during that day so subscribers can make sure their records are complete.
