Just a reminder before I head out on another sun-filled day: today is Day 1 for our pilot for electronic Reserve Orders. Here is our most recent post on the subject, with links for details.

Let me also repeat my invitation for traders to share your experiences with the new order type. The comment box below is yours.

Today in NYSE History
23 April 1970 — The Banking and Securities Industry Committee (BASIC) urged mandatory use of standardized CUSIP numbers to identify individual securities.

OK, that’s what BASIC was, but was does CUSIP actually stand for?

A Google search takes us to brief history lesson from the fine folks at CUSIP Global Services:

In July 1964, the New York Clearing House Association approached the American Bankers Association to develop a way to improve operating efficiencies across the industry by developing a standard method of identifying securities. The Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures (CUSIP) was created to work on this issue. Their work resulted in the establishment of the CUSIP system and in 1968 the CSB was formed to administer the CUSIP system.

Over the years, CSB’s core competencies in securities identification and data management, and strong relationships with industry stakeholders, have positioned the organization as a catalyst for innovation. As coverage has expanded to include new financial instruments and geographies, CUSIP Global Services has emerged as the overarching entity operated by CSB. Identifiers are available for more than 8.4 million unique financial instruments issued by corporations, municipalities and government agencies throughout the world, and thousands of new identifiers are generated every day.

Just a reminder before I head out on another sun-filled day: today is Day 1 for our pilot for electronic Reserve Orders. Here is our most recent post on the subject, with links for details.

Let me also repeat my invitation for traders to share your experiences with the new order type. The comment box below is yours.

Today in NYSE History
23 April 1970 — The Banking and Securities Industry Committee (BASIC) urged mandatory use of standardized CUSIP numbers to identify individual securities.

OK, that’s what BASIC was, but was does CUSIP actually stand for?

A Google search takes us to brief history lesson from the fine folks at CUSIP Global Services:

In July 1964, the New York Clearing House Association approached the American Bankers Association to develop a way to improve operating efficiencies across the industry by developing a standard method of identifying securities. The Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures (CUSIP) was created to work on this issue. Their work resulted in the establishment of the CUSIP system and in 1968 the CSB was formed to administer the CUSIP system.

Over the years, CSB’s core competencies in securities identification and data management, and strong relationships with industry stakeholders, have positioned the organization as a catalyst for innovation. As coverage has expanded to include new financial instruments and geographies, CUSIP Global Services has emerged as the overarching entity operated by CSB. Identifiers are available for more than 8.4 million unique financial instruments issued by corporations, municipalities and government agencies throughout the world, and thousands of new identifiers are generated every day.

Following is an excerpt from what looks like an preliminary transcript of today’s LaBranche & Co. Inc.first-quarter earnings call:

Marc Sulam - Healy Circle: Michael three issues; I think the last quarter you touched upon some regulatory changes that may be impacting the specialist business, can you give us an update on where those are?

Michael LaBranche: [There] are current proposals in Washington to really get the traditional cash specialist business more in line with the current market structure. So there is talk of allowing the business to become more integrated with other parts of our business and that would be true for any of the specialists that have other trading businesses and that would be something that we would welcome. It makes a lot more sense and it really — in today’s world when you have multiple products, multiple venues, multiple pricing where market share has gone from 80% to, whatever it is, 30 something %.

It really makes sense to be able to integrate your businesses with your other market making features and so we think that there is going to be some relief with regards to that. There is talk about changing the specialist name to integrated market makers which would also reflect the changes that are necessary there. The reduction in NLA was a big change because it certainly with the way stocks trade today, you don’t need the same amount of capital there and it makes more sense to be able to use that in other places.

Those are big things that are making a difference in that business but they are not just making the difference, in that business they are making a difference to our overall business because we can now more affectively use out capital. We are no longer tied to having bonds with a negative carry, for example. Those are the big changes. Then the Rule 98 which is the Chinese wall rule would be an important thing for us.

Marc Sulam - Healy Circle: What do you think the timetable is on that Rule 98 issue?

Michael LaBranche: It’s for me to say that. I can tell you what I hope it would be, and I would hope it would be a matter of months, if not less but it’s not up to me to make that determination.

Following is an excerpt from what looks like an preliminary transcript of today’s LaBranche & Co. Inc.first-quarter earnings call:

Marc Sulam - Healy Circle: Michael three issues; I think the last quarter you touched upon some regulatory changes that may be impacting the specialist business, can you give us an update on where those are?

Michael LaBranche: [There] are current proposals in Washington to really get the traditional cash specialist business more in line with the current market structure. So there is talk of allowing the business to become more integrated with other parts of our business and that would be true for any of the specialists that have other trading businesses and that would be something that we would welcome. It makes a lot more sense and it really — in today’s world when you have multiple products, multiple venues, multiple pricing where market share has gone from 80% to, whatever it is, 30 something %.

It really makes sense to be able to integrate your businesses with your other market making features and so we think that there is going to be some relief with regards to that. There is talk about changing the specialist name to integrated market makers which would also reflect the changes that are necessary there. The reduction in NLA was a big change because it certainly with the way stocks trade today, you don’t need the same amount of capital there and it makes more sense to be able to use that in other places.

Those are big things that are making a difference in that business but they are not just making the difference, in that business they are making a difference to our overall business because we can now more affectively use out capital. We are no longer tied to having bonds with a negative carry, for example. Those are the big changes. Then the Rule 98 which is the Chinese wall rule would be an important thing for us.

Marc Sulam - Healy Circle: What do you think the timetable is on that Rule 98 issue?

Michael LaBranche: It’s for me to say that. I can tell you what I hope it would be, and I would hope it would be a matter of months, if not less but it’s not up to me to make that determination.

Was busy having fun this afternoon so a bit belatedly I’m passing along this press release, as I know pricing news is always of interest to you: NYSE Arca Announces New Equities Pricing, Effective May 1. Excerpt:

NYSE Arca…today announced new transaction pricing, effective May 1, 2008, that will feature rebates for non-displayed orders and a new “post/take” rate combination for active customers in NYSE-listed (Tape A) securities. These changes follow recent price changes on April 1, 2008, when NYSE Arca introduced highly competitive fees for active traders in NASDAQ-listed (Tape C) securities as well as better rates in NYSE-listed securities and on NYSE Arca Options.

“The new NYSE Arca pricing provides even more benefits to high volume customers, and the MPL order type is a useful alternative to dark pools,” said Lawrence Leibowitz, Group Executive Vice President, U.S. Execution and Global Technology. “In addition to anonymity and price improvement, MPLs offer better fill rates due to unique order interaction on one of the largest exchange liquidity pools. Coupled with attractive rebates, this provides significant advantages over dark pools.”

If you need more detail, the press release has a complete chart of the new price schedule.

The SEC postponed until May 14 its rollout of a timetable for interactive-data reporting. It had been expected to take place yesterday. According to Financial Week, the meeting was postponed because the commission needed time to prepare and approve testimony for today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing on the role of credit rating agencies in the current liquidity crisis.

“A committee of accounting and legal experts, which was set up by the SEC and which has already published recommendations for a phased-in approach to mandating XBRL among public companies, is scheduled to meet again on May 2. [SEC Spokesman John] Nester acknowledged that the SEC will now be able to consider additional industry feedback on XBRL from that committee meeting,” Financial Week also reported.

No matter, really. It’s a worthwhile initiative, and it will come.

As you read here last week, I thought it was cool that SEC had a teleconference last week with bloggers who had written about XBRL. The SEC’s staff answered a number of questions and heard a number of suggestions, and the bloggers wrote about it again. Here are Excerpts of some of the comments I’ve seen to date:

Bill Cara, BillCara.com: Overall, my impression was 100% positive. Chairman Cox joined the discussion with 12 bloggers and described these developments in the area of interactive/interoperable data as (and I paraphrase) “a whole new world of corporate information disclosure”. There were some excellent questions and commentary. I limited mine to the impact these developments will have on the very pricey commercial information services industry that has always, to a degree, played to the wealthy person and large organization. I’d like to see the average person access the SEC database with the use of computer bots so that a level playing field is possible. I suspect that, regardless of the new standards, the Reuters, Bloombergs, Yahoos, Googles, CapitalIQs, S&P’s, etc have zero incentive to help the little guy, so maybe the SEC offers promise in this regard.

BTW, Bill’s post preceded mine by an hour, so my hope for a scoop was for naught. Blasted meetings, always interfering with my blogging!

Dominic Jones, IRWebReport.com: I can’t help now think how effective this conference call was. The SEC got invaluable input from real people who care about financial data. These are the same enterprising and passionate individuals who will create applications with XBRL that no one has yet dreamed of.

They’re pretty hard to ignore.

When is your first blogger conference call?

The SEC doing a conference call with bloggers is a great idea. It’s something companies should be doing, especially when bloggers like those syndicated via Seeking Alpha have huge audiences — bigger than Merrill Lynch or T. Rowe Price, according to Nielsen Online, NetView.

So if it’s good enough for the SEC, it should be good enough for your company.

Christian Gross, InvestorGeeks.com: On Friday April 18, 2007, I had the chance to participate in a conference call with the SEC on the topic of XBRL. In short, this is about the SEC computerizing SEC data. This means that when you want to calculate a valuation you just need to talk to a web service and it will provide you the information. I am in awe! This is wonderful. How often I’ve had to punch in the numbers by hand to calculate the valuation of a company. With this web service, however, I can query and ask for the details of a publicly traded company.

George, FatPitchFinancials: My questions were along the same lines of thought as Bill Cara’s. I wanted to know if the recent addition of XML feeds on EDGAR would also include information about XBRL data. Apparently, the EDGAR feeds were done independently of the XBRL feeds. You can see this lack of coordination by noting that the EDGAR feeds are Atom feeds while the XBRL feeds are RSS feeds. The least they could have done was pick one standard for web feeds at the SEC website. I really shouldn’t complain, since I love the new EDGAR feeds regardless of what format they are in. I was hoping the new EDGAR feeds would include the XBRL data because the EDGAR feeds are relatively easy to retrieve by ticker.

For my second question, I wanted to know if the SEC would provide an API or some standardized url format so that one could bring up an annual income statement of say Microsoft for 2007 without having to do a search at the SEC website. This is critical for making it easy to add XBRL data to mashups and widgets. I didn’t get a response to my question but I believe Ms. Kaepplein thought this was a good idea. Let’s hope this gets worked into the final XBRL storage and retrievel system at the SEC if it isn’t already part of it.

Doug McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St. asked how many companies are reporting in XBRL now. I didn’t quite catch the exact number but I believe it was about fifty participating in the SEC pilot program. In addition, many other companies are already using XBRL interally.

Christian Gross of InvestorGeeks asked a trader oriented question regarding the impact of XBRL on news scalping, which is a technique for being the first to trade on news. The concern would be that for popular stock releases that not everyone would be able to access the XBRL data when it is first released. The SEC representatives thought the data would be available in XBRL within a few minutes of filing. My thought is that XBRL will give individual investors a better chance of getting financial news as it breaks as long as the SEC servers are capable of handling the traffic.

Ray Pellecchia of the NYSE Euronext blog asked about the level of interest so far with XBRL. Apparently, there are various levels of interest in XBRL. Some companies are waiting, getting ready for it, and seeing what will happen. The SEC sadly reports that there is hardly any level of interest from the retail investor side. As a retail investor myself, I sure am interested in seeing XBRL expanded to cover all company financial filings. It would substantially lower my investment research costs.

Thinking about what other filings might be covered by XBRL, Dominic Jones of IRWebReport.com asked the SEC whether we might see footnotes, insider trades, etc. reported using XBRL. He didn’t really get a direct answer to his question, but we might learn more at the next SEC Open Meeting on May 14th. Dominic just wrote up his own observations from the conference call that you might also want to read.

Cate Long, Shopyield.com: The most important deliverable mentioned was the final taxonomy for issuers which the Commission expects on April 28th in addition to a “preparers guide”… I’m sure that those in accounting and at preparer tool groups look forward to some final determinations on how to structure their tagging …

It will be a mighty river of data that pours forth from the SEC when XBRL goes live … it’s really hard to imagine all the new methods of presenting and delivering data which will tell the story of America’s public companies … this will be transparency to the nth degree…

In the fixed income markets it’s all about cap structures and cash flows … it will be like poetry reading the K’s and Q’s of companies… and Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (credit rating agencies) will hoover this interactive data into their databases… and newly formed credit raters can build their infrastructure utilizing the XBRL system for public data…

OK, Cate toned down her Meg Ryan thing. But “a mighty river of data” is still powerfully and I think accurately stated.

That’s it on XBRL from me for a bit. Will post more when the SEC takes it up next month. Hope you had a great Tuesday, folks. I did. In fact, I put this post together while sitting on the little lawn swing on my deck, sipping an iced tea, watching the sun go down over Kenridge Farm and feeling the cool evening breeze start to come in. Would that I could do this full time. No, boss? Oh well. Talk to you soon, folks.

Today in NYSE History
22 April 1903 –The NYSE’s new building, designed by George B. Post, was officially opened.

Mr. Post did nice work. Happy birthday, you ol’ building!

The SEC postponed until May 14 its rollout of a timetable for interactive-data reporting. It had been expected to take place yesterday. According to Financial Week, the meeting was postponed because the commission needed time to prepare and approve testimony for today’s Senate Banking Committee hearing on the role of credit rating agencies in the current liquidity crisis.

“A committee of accounting and legal experts, which was set up by the SEC and which has already published recommendations for a phased-in approach to mandating XBRL among public companies, is scheduled to meet again on May 2. [SEC Spokesman John] Nester acknowledged that the SEC will now be able to consider additional industry feedback on XBRL from that committee meeting,” Financial Week also reported.

No matter, really. It’s a worthwhile initiative, and it will come.

As you read here last week, I thought it was cool that SEC had a teleconference last week with bloggers who had written about XBRL. The SEC’s staff answered a number of questions and heard a number of suggestions, and the bloggers wrote about it again. Here are Excerpts of some of the comments I’ve seen to date:

Bill Cara, BillCara.com: Overall, my impression was 100% positive. Chairman Cox joined the discussion with 12 bloggers and described these developments in the area of interactive/interoperable data as (and I paraphrase) “a whole new world of corporate information disclosure”. There were some excellent questions and commentary. I limited mine to the impact these developments will have on the very pricey commercial information services industry that has always, to a degree, played to the wealthy person and large organization. I’d like to see the average person access the SEC database with the use of computer bots so that a level playing field is possible. I suspect that, regardless of the new standards, the Reuters, Bloombergs, Yahoos, Googles, CapitalIQs, S&P’s, etc have zero incentive to help the little guy, so maybe the SEC offers promise in this regard.

BTW, Bill’s post preceded mine by an hour, so my hope for a scoop was for naught. Blasted meetings, always interfering with my blogging!

Dominic Jones, IRWebReport.com: I can’t help now think how effective this conference call was. The SEC got invaluable input from real people who care about financial data. These are the same enterprising and passionate individuals who will create applications with XBRL that no one has yet dreamed of.

They’re pretty hard to ignore.

When is your first blogger conference call?

The SEC doing a conference call with bloggers is a great idea. It’s something companies should be doing, especially when bloggers like those syndicated via Seeking Alpha have huge audiences — bigger than Merrill Lynch or T. Rowe Price, according to Nielsen Online, NetView.

So if it’s good enough for the SEC, it should be good enough for your company.

Christian Gross, InvestorGeeks.com: On Friday April 18, 2007, I had the chance to participate in a conference call with the SEC on the topic of XBRL. In short, this is about the SEC computerizing SEC data. This means that when you want to calculate a valuation you just need to talk to a web service and it will provide you the information. I am in awe! This is wonderful. How often I’ve had to punch in the numbers by hand to calculate the valuation of a company. With this web service, however, I can query and ask for the details of a publicly traded company.

George, FatPitchFinancials: My questions were along the same lines of thought as Bill Cara’s. I wanted to know if the recent addition of XML feeds on EDGAR would also include information about XBRL data. Apparently, the EDGAR feeds were done independently of the XBRL feeds. You can see this lack of coordination by noting that the EDGAR feeds are Atom feeds while the XBRL feeds are RSS feeds. The least they could have done was pick one standard for web feeds at the SEC website. I really shouldn’t complain, since I love the new EDGAR feeds regardless of what format they are in. I was hoping the new EDGAR feeds would include the XBRL data because the EDGAR feeds are relatively easy to retrieve by ticker.

For my second question, I wanted to know if the SEC would provide an API or some standardized url format so that one could bring up an annual income statement of say Microsoft for 2007 without having to do a search at the SEC website. This is critical for making it easy to add XBRL data to mashups and widgets. I didn’t get a response to my question but I believe Ms. Kaepplein thought this was a good idea. Let’s hope this gets worked into the final XBRL storage and retrievel system at the SEC if it isn’t already part of it.

Doug McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St. asked how many companies are reporting in XBRL now. I didn’t quite catch the exact number but I believe it was about fifty participating in the SEC pilot program. In addition, many other companies are already using XBRL interally.

Christian Gross of InvestorGeeks asked a trader oriented question regarding the impact of XBRL on news scalping, which is a technique for being the first to trade on news. The concern would be that for popular stock releases that not everyone would be able to access the XBRL data when it is first released. The SEC representatives thought the data would be available in XBRL within a few minutes of filing. My thought is that XBRL will give individual investors a better chance of getting financial news as it breaks as long as the SEC servers are capable of handling the traffic.

Ray Pellecchia of the NYSE Euronext blog asked about the level of interest so far with XBRL. Apparently, there are various levels of interest in XBRL. Some companies are waiting, getting ready for it, and seeing what will happen. The SEC sadly reports that there is hardly any level of interest from the retail investor side. As a retail investor myself, I sure am interested in seeing XBRL expanded to cover all company financial filings. It would substantially lower my investment research costs.

Thinking about what other filings might be covered by XBRL, Dominic Jones of IRWebReport.com asked the SEC whether we might see footnotes, insider trades, etc. reported using XBRL. He didn’t really get a direct answer to his question, but we might learn more at the next SEC Open Meeting on May 14th. Dominic just wrote up his own observations from the conference call that you might also want to read.

Cate Long, Shopyield.com: The most important deliverable mentioned was the final taxonomy for issuers which the Commission expects on April 28th in addition to a “preparers guide”… I’m sure that those in accounting and at preparer tool groups look forward to some final determinations on how to structure their tagging …

It will be a mighty river of data that pours forth from the SEC when XBRL goes live … it’s really hard to imagine all the new methods of presenting and delivering data which will tell the story of America’s public companies … this will be transparency to the nth degree…

In the fixed income markets it’s all about cap structures and cash flows … it will be like poetry reading the K’s and Q’s of companies… and Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (credit rating agencies) will hoover this interactive data into their databases… and newly formed credit raters can build their infrastructure utilizing the XBRL system for public data…

OK, Cate toned down her Meg Ryan thing. But “a mighty river of data” is still powerfully and I think accurately stated.

That’s it on XBRL from me for a bit. Will post more when the SEC takes it up next month. Hope you had a great Tuesday, folks. I did. In fact, I put this post together while sitting on the little lawn swing on my deck, sipping an iced tea, watching the sun go down over Kenridge Farm and feeling the cool evening breeze start to come in. Would that I could do this full time. No, boss? Oh well. Talk to you soon, folks.

Today in NYSE History
22 April 1903 –The NYSE’s new building, designed by George B. Post, was officially opened.

Mr. Post did nice work. Happy birthday, you ol’ building!

This Wednesday, 23 April, NYSE will begin Phase 1 of the pilot program for electronic entry of Reserve Orders, as described here a couple-three weeks ago.

Here are links to some additional information:

NYSE rule filing

Reserve Order information sheet

100-stock pilot list

Full technical specification

I’d be curious to hear any user experiences with the new order type. The comment box below is open to you, as always.

Happy Monday, folks. On This Day (NYTimes.com), in 1789, John Adams was sworn in as America’s first vice president. How nice that he timed that to coincide with last night’s finale of the HBO “John Adams” mini-series!

Today also is the birthday of John Muir (1838-1914), the naturalist considered the father of the environmental movement. His obit recounts the remarkable life of a geologist, explorer, philosopher, artist, author, and editor. I wonder what he would make of our world today.

This Wednesday, 23 April, NYSE will begin Phase 1 of the pilot program for electronic entry of Reserve Orders, as described here a couple-three weeks ago.

Here are links to some additional information:

NYSE rule filing

Reserve Order information sheet

100-stock pilot list

Full technical specification

I’d be curious to hear any user experiences with the new order type. The comment box below is open to you, as always.

Happy Monday, folks. On This Day (NYTimes.com), in 1789, John Adams was sworn in as America’s first vice president. How nice that he timed that to coincide with last night’s finale of the HBO “John Adams” mini-series!

Today also is the birthday of John Muir (1838-1914), the naturalist considered the father of the environmental movement. His obit recounts the remarkable life of a geologist, explorer, philosopher, artist, author, and editor. I wonder what he would make of our world today.

Apologies for multiple XBRL-related posts in one day, but your no-longer-quite-so-humble blogger was honored to be invited on the SEC’s conference call this afternoon with a dozen bloggers about interactive data reporting, ahead of Monday’s expected action by the Commission on this more-accessible type of financial disclosure.

Am jammed at the moment and will write more about this later, but for the moment just wanted to tell you that Chairman Christopher Cox joined the end of the call. He talked about how the reporting language would make it easier for investors to sift, compare and analyze data from companies, and that it will also make easier the exchange of financial information globally in addition to domestically. He said, “It’s going to be so breathtakingly different from what people even in recent years have been used to, that it’s sometimes hard to get people to focus on the big change that’s in store.”

If no one else has blogged about this yet, then I have one word to add:

Scoop!

Cox used to be the first SEC chairman to write into a blog (Jonathan Schwartz’s); he’s now also the first to participate in a teleconference with bloggers, which also was the first the SEC has ever conducted.

Glad they had the call; I learned a lot; will share more later. Smart move on their part, too, to have the chairman join the call. He’s walking the talk. Or, for a call, is it talking the talk? Anyway, he’s obviously committed to this worthy initiative.