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Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Nasdaq Fund Network #2008 - 7
MFQS Enhancement Release Planned for February 9, 2009

Please Route to:

  • Subscribers of the Mutual Fund Quotation Service (MFQS)

Summary:

  • NASDAQ OMX will implement the following enhancements to the Mutual Fund Quotation Service (MFQS) on Monday, February 9, 2009:
    • Modify the Mutual Fund message formats to support the submission of Total Assets
    • Modify the Money Market Fund message format to support the submission of prior day data and prior day corrections
  • NASDAQ OMX plans to offer Saturday user acceptance tests for MFQS and MFDS subscribers on January 31, 2009, and February 7, 2009.

Who you should contact:

What MFQS product enhancements does NASDAQ OMX plan to implement for mutual funds?

NASDAQ OMX Information, LLC, will be enhancing the MFQS interface to support the daily reporting of Total Assets for open-end and closed-end mutual funds. NASDAQ OMXSM is adding the Total Assets field at the request of the Associated Press, Bloomberg and several fund pricing agents.

The Total Assets field will be seven bytes and will capture the total assets under management in millions of dollars for the individual fund instrument. The Total Assets field format is $$$$$.d (in which $ refers to millions of dollars). To simplify the implementation process for CTCI subscribers, NASDAQ OMX will repurpose reserve bytes in the existing inbound MFQS Valuation – Mutual Fund message format to capture the Total Assets value.

While NASDAQ OMX strongly encourages all mutual funds to report the Total Assets value, it realizes that some firms may not be able to generate the value in time for the February 9, 2009, release. If a firm is unable to submit the Total Assets value for a mutual fund instrument, NASDAQ OMX will populate the field with the value of β€œNA” on the outbound data feed to the newspapers and market data vendors.

What MFQS product enhancements does NASDAQ OMX plan to implement for money market funds?

NASDAQ OMX will be standardizing the MFQS Valuation message and adding functionality to support the data entry of prior day price data for money market funds.

Currently, NASDAQ OMX supports two versions of the money market fund message format on the MFQS product. On all days, MFQS pricing agents are asked to report average maturity and seven-day yield values for money market funds. On Wednesdays, MFQS pricing agents are also asked to submit effective annualized seven-day yield and total asset values for money market funds. Because MFQS had special business logic associated with the two money market fund messages, NASDAQ OMX was able to capture money market price data for the current trading day only via the MFQS system.

To promote better data quality, NASDAQ OMX has decided to standardize the money market fund message format. At the same time, NASDAQ OMX will be enhancing the interface to allow MFQS pricing agents to submit prior day data or prior day corrections for money market funds.

Given that there are a number of newspapers that carry money market tables on Thursdays, NASDAQ OMX strongly recommends that MFQS pricing agents continue to report the effective annualized yield and total assets values on Wednesdays as they do today. If a MFQS pricing agent wishes to submit the full range of fields on a daily basis, however, NASDAQ OMX is prepared to process and disseminate the data to the market data community.

Where can I find the revised MFQS documentation?

NASDAQ OMX has modified the following MFQS technical support documents to reflect the format changes for the February 9, 2009 release:

Inbound Interfaces:

Outbound Interfaces:

NASDAQ OMX will also modify the MFQS website interface to support the mutual fund and money market fund changes. NASDAQ OMX plans to re-issue the MFQS website user guide in January of 2009.

When will NASDAQ OMX offer testing opportunities for the MFQS format changes?

NASDAQ OMX plans to offer user acceptance tests (UATs) for MFQS and MFDS subscribers on the following Saturdays:

  • Saturday, January 31, 2009
  • Saturday, February 7, 2009

During the UATs, NASDAQ OMX plans to support inbound data entry via the MFQS website, MFQS FTP server and CTCI. NASDAQ OMX will post additional testing instructions in January of 2009.

Where can I find additional information?


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