SEC Form ATS

SEC Form ATS is a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an initial operations report or an amendment to initial operations report, or a cessation of operations report for alternative trading systems. SEC Form ATS must be filed 20 days prior to initial operations or before a material change to an alternative trading system.

The definition of alternative trading system on SEC Form ATS is as follows: Any organization, association, person, group of persons, or system: (1) that constitutes, maintains, or provides a market place or facilities for bringing together purchasers and sellers of securities or for otherwise performing with respect to securities the functions commonly performed by a stock exchange within the meaning of Rule 3b-16 under the Exchange Act; and (2) that does not (i) set rules governing the conduct of subscribers other than the conduct of such subscribers' trading on such organization, association, person, group of persons, or system, or (ii) discipline subscribers other than exclusion from trading.

SEC Form ATS requires exhibits of the filer that describe the types of subscribers (e.g., broker-dealers, institutions, retail entities); list of securities that will trade on the ATS; articles of incorporation, by-laws and amendments of the ATS; manner of operation and procedures of the trading system; and other material disclosures.

As of July 31, 2017, there were over 80 alternative trading systems with SEC Form ATS on file. Several are owned by banks such as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase, but a majority are run by specialized platforms including Instinet, Liquidnet and MarketAxess. Geographically, they are spread around the country in Washington (state), Texas, Florida, Illinois and as far as Hawaii; however, most are based in New York City.