The FIX Trading Community, the industry association that manages the world’s trading language, the FIX Protocol, has submitted responses to two Financial Conduct Authority consultations on UK equity market structure and the delivery of an equity consolidated tape.

Taken together, the responses call for reforms that give market participants a clearer view of genuine liquidity; improve the consistency of trade data; strengthen market resilience; and ensure the consolidated tape remains complete and useful as trading models and operating hours evolve.

Executive Director Jim Kaye said the consultations provided an important opportunity to improve the quality and usability of UK equity market data while reducing avoidable operational complexity.

“The objective should be simple: market data that accurately reflects real liquidity, can be interpreted consistently and remains reliable when market conditions or trading models change,” Kaye said. “The FCA’s proposals provide a strong basis for progress. Our recommendations are intended to make the framework clearer, more resilient and easier to implement across a complex, interconnected market.”

Key recommendations

• Measure liquidity by trading phase, execution mechanism and addressability, rather than relying on undifferentiated aggregate volumes. This should allow for ‘special’ days such as index rebalances.
• Distinguish automated and manual off-venue executions through a clear trade flag.
• Remove or clearly identify technical and non-addressable trades and align UK trade flags more closely with the EU where practical (including replacing the TNCP flag with the EU-aligned CONT flag for contingent trades).
• Use clear, standardised and machine-readable outage communications, supported by proportionate playbooks and closing-price fallback arrangements.
• Keep venue and systematic internaliser quote data separate in the consolidated tape.
• Set consolidated tape requirements around completeness, resilience and reliability, with operating arrangements that reflect actual market activity.
• Avoid bringing complex synthetic equity activity into public transparency without clear scope, dedicated identifiers and a full assessment of cross-regime impacts.

“Good regulation depends on good data,” Kaye said. “By making liquidity easier to understand and operational processes easier to automate, the UK can support transparency and resilience without adding unnecessary complexity for firms or data users.”

The consultation responses can be found at https://fixtrading.org/packages/fca-consultation-cp26-30/ and https://fixtrading.org/packages/fca-consultation-cp26-31/.

Source: FIX Trading Community