The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority said Thursday that it processed "an unprecedented" amount of market activity through the first six months of 2018, averaging a record 57.9 billion electronic records per day during the period — a 62% increase over the average daily volume in 2017.
Robert Cook, FINRA's president and CEO, said in announcing the market activity that "cloud storage and processing have made it possible for FINRA to not only stay ahead of growing volume but also perform increasingly sophisticated surveillance across U.S. securities markets."
FINRA's "pioneering cloud strategy has allowed it to handle the record-setting volume smoothly while performing vigorous regulatory oversight of securities trading," the broker-dealer self-regulator said.
Some of the most volatile markets in years, along with nearly 101 billion electronic messages coursed through FINRA's regulatory platform in a single day — nearly triple the average daily volume experienced in 2017.
All of the 10 highest-volume days on record have occurred in 2018, with four of them in a single week: the exceptionally volatile week of Feb. 5, FINRA said.
"Processing and analyzing this record activity efficiently and effectively is essential for FINRA to do our job of protecting investors and ensuring market integrity," Cook said.
Trading activity in the stock, options and fixed income markets creates a variety of electronic records that FINRA monitors for regulatory purposes.
