By Peter Simpson, OneTick Cloud Product Owner, KX
The market data landscape is undergoing a massive transformation. To help our clients navigate these changes, Chris Brampton (Head of Market Data Onboarding) and I hosted a webinar this week detailing the evolution of the US Securities Information Processors (SIPs) and structural shifts across global markets.
The US SIPs (CTA and UTP) have historically consolidated trade and quote information from all US stock exchanges. However, gaps in this feed historically created an "information imbalance" between average users and sophisticated firms taking direct exchange feeds. Recent SEC mandates are rapidly closing that gap, bringing more transparency, granularity, and unfortunately, a massive explosion in data volumes.
Here is a summary of the key takeaways from the webinar and how OneTick Cloud is adapting to keep your analytics and compliance workflows running smoothly.
1. The SIP Reform Timeline: More Data, More Granularity
The SIP is becoming much more detailed through a phased rollout:
- Quote Sizes in Shares (Nov. 2025): The SIPs stopped reporting bid and offer sizes in "round lots" (which hid exact share counts) and began reporting actual share quantities.
- Fractional Shares (Feb. 2026): With fractional trading now accounting for over 5% of activity, the SIPs began publishing fractional share data down to six decimal places. This is crucial for gaining visibility into high-priced stocks (like Berkshire Hathaway) where most activity is fractional.
- Odd Lot Quotations (Apr. 2026): The SIPs began disseminating odd-lot quotes priced at or better than the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO). Because odd lots make up a massive portion of the market, this move finally illuminated top-of-book prices that were previously invisible to SIP consumers.
- Half-Penny Tick Sizes (Nov. 2026): Liquid stocks with a time-weighted spread of 1.5 cents or less will transition to half-penny minimum tick increments. While high current stock valuations might mute the immediate impact of this rule, it has the potential to trigger much higher message rates from fast-moving algos.
- Near 24-Hour Trading (Dec. 2026): Major exchanges like NASDAQ, NYSE ARCA, and CBOE EdgeX will move to a 23-hour trading model, opening at 9:00 PM Eastern to capture overnight and Asian market interest.
2. The Unprecedented Volume Explosion
With new fractional and odd-lot data flooding the consolidated tape, data volumes have doubled over the past year. OneTick's average daily data capture has surged from 30GB to between 60GB and 100GB.
Message rates for US equities alone have jumped from 2 billion to nearly 6 billion messages a day. When combined with our expansive coverage of global equities, derivatives, and crypto, OneTick is now processing between 10 billion and 14 billion messages daily.
3. How OneTick Handles Odd Lots Without Breaking Compliance
While odd lots provide deeper market visibility, regulatory best execution requirements are still based on the traditional round-lot NBBO. To ensure our clients' compliance and surveillance models aren't disrupted, OneTick has implemented a dual-table approach:
- Preserving Regulatory Baselines: We are leaving the existing QTE and NBBO tables completely untouched. These will continue to reflect round-lot quotes and the official regulatory NBBO.
- Introducing Composite Tables: We have created two new tables—QTE_COMP and NBBO_COMP—which combine round lots and odd lots into a single view. If an odd lot offers the best price, it will appear here. If the best price is a mix of both, the tables will show the sum of the two, making it simple to analyze true top-of-book liquidity. This data is also backfilled to June 1, 2026.
4. Global Market Structure Changes
The evolution of market data isn't restricted to US equities. Our team highlighted several major international updates:
- CME Crypto Trading: To better align with the 24/7 nature of cryptocurrency, the CME drastically reduced its daily electronic trading maintenance window from an hour down to just two minutes (4:00 PM to 4:02 PM Central). CME crypto products now also trade straight through the weekend, save for a brief pause early Saturday morning.
- NSE India: Following regulatory intervention regarding the publication of non-public order flow details, NSE India abruptly replaced its data feeds. OneTick quickly adapted to ingest the new, compliant services without interruption.
- Expanding OneTick Cloud Coverage: We have massively expanded our 4-Petabyte AWS-hosted cloud to include new datasets like FINRA TRACE, Continuous Contracts (12-month rolling), Taiwan and MIAX futures, US earnings events, and upcoming US Level 3 Book Depth for CBOE, NASDAQ, and NYSE markets. Options coverage has also expanded for NSE India, BSE, and Montreal.
Future-Proof Your Analytics
Whether you prefer to pull down Parquet files from an S3 bucket, write complex queries in Python and SQL, or use our new natural language MCP server to generate AI-assisted analytics, OneTick Cloud provides the scale necessary to handle tomorrow's data volumes.
Visit onetick.com/cloud-services to start your OneTick Cloud Free Trial and access global market data on demand.
Best wishes,
Peter Simpson