13.III.1.3 Timing

The MiFID II Directive requires APAs to have adequate policies and arrangements for making equity post-trade data available as close to real-time as is technically possible.1 Under MiFID II real-time refers to a maximum of one minute.2 ESMA clarifies in a Q&A that an investment firm executing trades outside an RM or MTF needs to report the trade to the APA as soon as technically possible after execution, regardless of the application of any deferrals.3 ESMA adds that the APA should be in charge of publishing the trade in due time, according to the deferral period that applies to the specific transaction.4

MiFID II also covers the requirement for APAs to use so-called ‘timestamps’ in the equity post-trade information. Time-stamping refers to the recording of date and time,5 here being the date and time when the investment firm reported the trade to the APA.6 The APA in principle needs to publish the date and time up to the second as a part of the equity post-trade information.7 ‘In principle’, since an exception is provided where an APA publishes equity post-trade data through an electronic system. In case of an electronic system, the APA needs to include the date and time, up to the millisecond.8MiFID II obliges that the accuracy of the timestamps cannot diverge by more than one second, respectively millisecond, from the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).9 The requirement of timestamps for equity post-trade information is a new phenomenon under MiFID II. The timestamp requirements are in place to provide useful information to the market in observing post-trading activity.10