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Wednesday, December 17, 2025

UTP Vendor Alert #2025 - 34
Testing Opportunities - SIP Fractional Share Trade Reporting Enhancements

Markets Impacted:

Products Impacted:

Contact Information:

What you need to know:

  • As previously announced in UTP Vendor Notice 2025-6, FINRA is planning to implement enhancements to the FINRA equity trade reporting facilities to support the reporting of fractional share quantities. The enhancements require associated updates to FINRA’s trade reporting guidance, as described in greater detail in the previously published Trade Reporting Notice. These enhancements are being made in coordination with the Unlisted Trading Privileges (UTP) and Consolidated Tape Association (CTA) Securities Information Processors (SIPs) to facilitate the dissemination of fractional share quantities for NMS stocks.

  • In support of this announcement, UTP SIP will provide the industry with several testing opportunities defined below. Please ensure that your systems and customers are properly prepared for this release by participating in these testing dates.
  • The UTP SIP changes are described in updated specifications, which are available on the UTP Plan webpage and will be implemented as a “Hot Cut” release.

What is Changing?

As previously announced in UTP Vendor Notice 2025-6, this initiative will enhance the existing UTP SIP product to support fractional share trade reporting and dissemination. The UTP Processor will make the following new implementation to facilitate this Change Request.

UTP Trade Data Service Changes

  • Fractional share amounts as low as one millionth of one share (0.000001 shares) will be supported for any trade report or subsequent action on a trade report.
  • New UTDF messages supporting both whole and fractional share trades (as a single volume field) will be created to replace existing UTDF messages:
    • Trade report (current day)
    • Trade cancel / error
    • Trade correction
    • Prior-day as-of trade report
    • Closing trade summary
    • Total consolidated and market center volume

Please review the new message format changes that will be introduced with the “Hot-Cut” release, which is scheduled to launch on Monday, February 23, 2026.

As with any hot-cut release, data subscribers should be prepared to process both the old and new formats, in the unlikely event that the release needs to fallback.

What is the timeline for this enhancement?

Timing: Monday, February 23, 2026
The UTP SIP and SIAC are working jointly, in consultation with the UTP Operating Committee and FINRA, to establish a release schedule that ensures a smooth transition. The UTP SIP and SIAC will work closely with the industry to ensure participation in testing.

Saturday testing opportunities are conducted between 8:00 am till 12:00 pm. Data subscribers should begin recording, over the production IP Channels, as early as 6:30 am till 1:30 pm in order to capture the full data set.

What are the testing opportunities?

In coordination with FINRA the following testing opportunities will be supported:

Type of Testing Scheduled Dates Description
Evening Test Transmissions Nightly beginning in November 2025 through production launch Each weeknight between 9:30 pm – 10:30 pm, the test data will be available on the “Test Broadcast” IP Multicast channels. No registration is required to participate in evening testing. Nightly test data will be as follows:
  • December 8 – February 2026 new formats WITH the fractional portion populated, when provided by the participants. (could see a mix of messages with and without fractional data)
Saturday User Acceptance Test (UAT)
November 15, 2025;
December 13, 2025;
January 10, 2026 (Intraday Fallback);
February 7, 2026
February 21, 2026 (confidence test)		 FINRA will enter data and process this through SIP. As it is generated, the UTP SIP will disseminate the data via the UTP data feed production channels.
  • January 10, 2026 test: the SIP’s will fallback the release to the legacy message formats and vendors are expected to be able to receive and process these for the remainder of the test.

  • Other Participants may also enter data (WITHOUT fractional data populated), the UTP SIP will disseminate the data via the UTP data feed production channels.
Production Launch February 23, 2026 FINRA and UTP plan for a “Hot Cut” production implementation to begin February 23, 2026.

In addition to the weekend and nightly testing the UTP is providing the fractional code within the Nasdaq Testing Facility (NTF) continuing through production launch.

What is the plan for January 10, 2026 Fallback testing?

Time Test CategoryData Recipients Expected Results
~7:58 AMSODUTP Start-of-Day message
~7:58 - 8:00 AM Symbol Reference DataUTP to publish Symbol Symbol Directory (Category A Type B) messages for all symbols
9:30:00 AMMarket OpenQuotes and trades accepted and disseminated via the multicast output lines. All trade messages are published by SIP in the new Fractional Share message formats
9:30 - 10:15 AMData VerificationData Subscribers can verify Data over the Output Multicast lines. All trade messages are published in the new Fractional Share message formats LULD Price Bands based on available trades, including any fractional trades
10:15 - 10:30 AMFallbackSIP to initiate release fallback to the legacy format (non-fractional share message formats), which involves configuration rollback within the UTP Processor environments. Output multicast data dissemination for all lines will go dormant (no message dissemination) Services will remain in our Primary Data Center Location
10:30 AMPost FallbackOutput multicast data dissemination for all lines will begin to disseminate messages in the legacy non-fractional message formats. Messages will persist from where they went dormant (from last disseminated sequence) prior to the fallback decision. Price Bands are persisted from prior to the fallback and subsequently updates will be based on any new trades received after the fallback
Participants that were submitting Trade messages in the Fractional Shares must switch their trade reporting to the legacy format (i.e. non-Fractional Share format), before reconnecting to SIP
Data Subscribers to accept and process quotes and trades disseminated on the output lines in the old (non-Fractional Share) message formats. Note - Data Subscribers are expected to be able to handle the older format UTP Retransmission requests will return messages with the legacy formats, for retransmission of trade data prior to the fallback, volume will not reflect the fractional volume. (a trade reported as 1.25 shares prior to the fallback will show 1.00 shares if retransmitted)
10:30 - 11:00 AMData VerificationData Subscribers can verify Data over the Output Multicast lines.
12:00:00 PM End of Regular Trading Hours (typically 04:00 PM) LULD Bands cleared by SIP
12:00 - 12:10 PM SIP to generate Closing Trade Summary Message (Category A - Type Z)
12:30:00 PM End of Test

Who should I contact for additional information?