The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has
announced that its new $43.7 million next generation market
surveillance system has become operational. The system, known as
Market Analysis Intelligence (MAI), will allow ASIC to monitor up
to one billion order changes per day. On this basis, MAI will have
sufficient capacity to monitor trades where algorithmic trading*
and high frequency trading** are becoming more prevalent in
Australia.
What has changed?
This represents a significant upgrade in comparison to ASIC's
previous capabilities in detecting insider trading and other market
misconduct prohibitions. Under the old system, when a suspicious
trade occurred, ASIC would request that the broker provide a list
of their clients who participated in the trading of that security
on the day in question. ASIC would then undertake the
labour-intensive task of manually matching the suspicious trades
against the relevant individual/s provided by the broker.
