Has Covid stopped the clocks on FX timestamp efforts?

Budget reallocation may not be the only factor stalling standardisation progress, say participants

The foreign exchange markets’ push towards standardised timestamps – and greater transaction cost analysis (TCA) – has stalled. Since February 2020, when the Investment Association published a best execution guide for timestamps, the industry has made no concerted effort to standardise more granular timestamps.

And while regulations may require venues to record trades to the nearest millisecond or better – Europe’s second Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (Mifid II) among them – some