U.S. regulators are altering plans for a multibillion-dollar computer system to monitor trades on stock exchanges and other markets to blunt criticism that the project would be expensive and to speed the system’s implementation.
The Securities and Exchange Commission won’t require firms to report comprehensive trading information to the agency in real time as originally proposed, a concession that is welcomed by the financial industry and that experts said would make the system significantly cheaper. Regulators believe that even with a slower system than their original proposal, they would be able to better understand market disruptions such as the May 2010 “flash crash.”