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Thursday, June 12, 2025

Equity Trader Alert #2025 - 36
REMINDER: Nasdaq will Retire Legacy TRF FIX Protocol for FINRA / Nasdaq TRF Carteret in June 2025

Category:

  • System Impact

Markets Impacted:

Contact Information:

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As previously announced in ETA2024-62, FINRA/Nasdaq TRF participants who utilize legacy TRF FIX port services for the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret™ will be required to migrate to Native TRF FIX 4.2 by Friday, 6/27/2025.

What's Changing and When? 

Currently, Nasdaq supports both legacy and Native TRF FIX for reporting to the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret[1]. The legacy TRF FIX protocol retirement will streamline electronic reporting on the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret, consistent with existing electronic reporting on the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago[2]. Any FIX clients, including broker-dealers or Service Bureaus, that wish to continue to deliver electronic transactions to the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret will need to migrate to the Native FIX protocol by no later than Friday, June 27, 2025.

From now until Friday, June 27, 2025, clients may use legacy and Native FIX concurrently to ensure a successful transition. Clients are not required to maintain a FIX parallel period and can migrate to the Native FIX service as soon as they are ready. Clients may cancel their legacy FIX ports at any time by submitting a FINRA Services Port Request Form. Any legacy FIX ports which have not been cancelled by Friday, June 27, 2025, will be automatically terminated on June 30, 2025.

Clients may review their Native FIX ports in Customer Portal under Port Inventory. If you have any questions regarding Native or legacy FIX, please reach out to Subscriber Services.

As of January 1, 2025, Nasdaq is no longer accepting requests for new or additional legacy TRF FIX ports. Clients should follow the steps outlined below to request new (Native) FIX connections before retiring their legacy FIX connections.

Upgraded FIX Port Benefits

The upgraded Native FIX port improves resiliency and throughput, and standardizes FINRA/Nasdaq TRF product offerings for both the FINRA/Nasdaq Carteret and the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago.

  • Resiliency: The Native FIX port provides real-time disaster recovery for FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret in case of a port, system or location outage.
  • Throughput: The Native FIX port improves performance and standardizes throughput between FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret and FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago.

Differentiation between Native and Legacy FIX

There are certain behavioral differences between the FIX ports:

  • Acknowledgement Messages: All Trade Report messages will receive an acknowledgement message. Customers using the new Native FIX ports may see additional optional tags returned than previously seen through legacy FIX.
  • Port Connections and Failover: Native FIX ports will operate in hot-hot mode. Nasdaq will provide customers with primary and secondary IP addresses for Native FIX ports. Customers are responsible for monitoring their connections, detecting when there is a connection failure, and failing over to the secondary connection to re-establish connectivity.
  • Reject Handling: Due to the differences in validation when using the new Native FIX ports, firms may receive rejects on transactions which may not have resulted in rejects using their existing legacy ports.
  • Hours of Operation: Connectivity for Native FIX is available from 6:30am – 8pm EST.

 

Getting Started and Testing Opportunities 

All customers are recommended to perform connectivity, functional and DR tests for new Native FIX production ports.

Customers will receive an email with connectivity information for new Native FIX ports once the order is processed. Below are instructions on how to get started:

Step

Task

Contact

1. Add FIX services

Complete FINRA Services Port Request Form to establish and/or remove port connections. Clients are required to request the removal of their former port connections to avoid being double billed.

Nasdaq Subscriber Services: 

(212) 231-5180

2. Test FIX in the Nasdaq Test Facility

Establish a testing timeframe with Trading Services and notify NTF Billing by email. Customers can perform production connectivity and software testing starting now. Free testing is available for 30-day period.

NTF Billing & Nasdaq Trading Services:

(212) 231-5180

3. Test FIX in Production

Work with Nasdaq to understand which weekends are available for production connectivity and software testing. Nasdaq lists Saturday testing dates here.

Nasdaq Trading Services:

(212) 231-5180

4. Cut over to FIX production service

Client determines the go-live date and informs Nasdaq.

Nasdaq Trading Services:

(212) 231-5180

The FIX port (non-trading) production cost is $500 per port per month. FIX (non-trading) DR ports are free. Pricing for legacy FIX and new Native FIX is the same. Please refer to Nasdaq’s Price List for additional information.

 

More Information

Please refer to the Specifications Page for more information on the Trading Reporting FIX reach out to Nasdaq Subscriber Services, Trading Services, or NTF Billing you have any questions for the respective departments.

 

 

 

 

Footnotes:

1. In Sept 2018, FINRA and Nasdaq launched the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago solely with Native FIX 4.2 connectivity. For more information, see ETA2018-41. 

2. In May 2019, Nasdaq introduced Native TRF FIX for FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret. For more information, see ETA2019-14. 

 

““FINRA/Nasdaq TRF” means the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Carteret and the FINRA/Nasdaq TRF Chicago, depending on the facility to which the member firm reports.

FINRA™, Trade Reporting Facility™ and TRF™ are trademarks of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc.; FINRA/NASDAQ TRF™ is used under license for Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc.