DTCC tests 24x5 trading, State Street launches digital asset platform, and more

I turned 28 on Tuesday and marked three years at WatersTechnology last week. To celebrate these milestones, I watched one of the best movies of all time, “Pacific Rim” and finally fixed my record player after it had been stuck on mute for a year. Now I can look out at the gray and rainy London skyline while accompanied by high-quality vinyl, instead of Spotify.

Anyway, the news.

Announced this week

DTCC begins 24x5 trading tests

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation began industry-wide testing for 24x5 trading in US equity markets on January 11. This marks a move towards near-continuous trading, which the clearing house hopes will expand global market access, improve responsiveness across time zones, and strengthen market resiliency.

The testing phase comes ahead of the National Securities Clearing Corporation’s transition to a 24x5 schedule on June 28, and ahead of the national exchanges’ forthcoming adoption of 24x5 trading, subject to regulatory approvals.

STG, Gresham carve out S&P Global’s data businesses

Private equity firm STG completed the acquisition of ThinkFolio from S&P Global. ThinkFolio, which STG says it will operate as an independent business, provides the portfolio management firm with resources to enhance service delivery and expand technological innovation across fixed income, multi-asset, and investment workflows.

STG also this month backed an acquisition by its subsidiary Gresham, a data automation vendor, of S&P Global’s Enterprise Data Management business. Following the close, EDM will continue to operate its current range of products within Gresham, maintaining its product roadmap, customer relationships, and delivery model.

FIS acquires Global Payments’ Issuer Solutions, sells stake in Worldpay

FIS completed its acquisition of Global Payments’ Issuer Solutions business, formerly known as TSYS, for a net purchase price of $12 billion including $1.5 billion of net present value of tax assets. Offerings from Issuer Solutions, the world’s largest issuing business, will now go to market under FIS’ Total Issuing Solutions portfolio brand.

FIS simultaneously completed the sale of its remaining minority stake in Worldpay to Global Payments.

Rimes partners with analytics providers to strengthen client data capabilities

Rimes, an enterprise data management and investment intelligence solutions provider, announced three strategic partnerships with indexing vendor Panta, market data provider BMLL, and risk management vendor Ortec Finance. Panta will serve as the technology partner for Rimes’ new Index Analytics Service, while BMLL will allow Rimes clients to access historical order book data, and Ortec Finance will provide two-way data connectivity between Rimes and Ortec’s proprietary software, Pearl.

Together, these partnerships are part of Rimes’ strategy to integrate data capabilities directly into the environments that clients already use, resulting in reduced integration issues and faster onboarding.

BNY extends digital cash options for institutional clients

BNY has enabled on-chain mirrored representations of client deposit balances on its digital assets platform. Early participants include a wide range of prominent financial institutions and digital natives.

This capability operates on BNY’s private, permissioned blockchain and is governed by the company’s risk, compliance, and control frameworks. Client balances continue to be recorded on BNY’s traditional systems to maintain regulatory and reporting integrity.

In the future, BNY aims to support rules‑based, near real-time cash movements to reduce settlement friction and enhance liquidity and operational efficiency for institutional clients.

Clearstream partners with Blackstone to broaden private markets access

Clearstream, Deutsche Börse Group’s post-trade services provider, will add private market investment strategies from Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, to its platform to broaden access for individual investors.

Clearstream’s platform serves as a gateway to a broad range of wealth management clients, leveraging 300 distribution partners, including large global wealth managers, with a strong presence in Europe and Asia.

ExtractAlpha expands stock selection tool to global markets

ExtractAlpha has launched Analyst Model Global, an expansion of its existing tool, Analyst Model, delivering a globally consistent stock selection signal across Emea, Apac, and the Americas.

Analyst Model Global converts sell-side analyst forecasts into a predictive alpha signal by combining ExtractAlpha’s proprietary TrueBeats surprise predictions with analyst revisions, ratings changes, and post-earnings announcement effects. The model spans earnings, fundamentals, and industry-specific key performance indicators, enabling investors to systematically identify mispriced expectations across markets.

Arcesium opens Hong Kong office to support demand in Asia-Pacific

Investment lifecycle and data management vendor Arcesium has expanded its global operations with the opening of a new office in Hong Kong. Arcesium’s presence in Asia allows the firm to meet growing regional demand for data infrastructure and operational technology across different asset classes and strategies.

The company’s Hong Kong office will support its existing client base of institutional asset managers, hedge funds, banks, and private markets firms operating across the broader Asia-Pacific region, while also providing technology and services for new launches and regional expansions.

Arcesium launched in 2015 from its headquarters in New York and technology and operations hub in Hyderabad, India, before expanding into London in 2020 and Lisbon in 2024.

State Street launches digital asset platform

State Street has launched Digital Asset Platform, a secure, scalable infrastructure for tokenized assets. This paves the way for State Street’s digital ambitions to develop core products for its clients, including tokenized money market funds, exchange-traded funds, tokenized assets, and cash products including tokenized deposits and stablecoins.

The platform includes wallet management, custody, and cash capabilities, designed to support tokenized product development across jurisdictions covering both private and public permissioned blockchain networks. Underpinned by enhanced security and operational and on-chain compliance controls, integrated with existing systems, the platform supports access for institutional clients and offers an interface between digital and traditional services.

What you might have missed from us

Fintechs grapple with how to enter Middle East markets

The appeals of Middle East expansion lie behind challenging operational risks such as data fragmentation, regulatory headaches, and a murky (but improving) market structure.

The Middle East, particularly the Gulf, is one of the world’s fastest-growing financial centers. Hedge fund Man Group plans to open an office in Abu Dhabi this year, while French investment firm Ardian will do the same in Kuwait. Last year, the region was host to several industry conferences, including FISD Dubai 2025, the Global AI Show 2025, and Abu Dhabi Finance Week.

Despite opacity issues, limited opportunities for short-selling, and a young post-trade infrastructure, firms continue to deepen their presence in the region, illustrating their willingness to navigate challenges in return for something they are losing in other major markets.

New EBA taxonomy could help integrate emerging op risks

A new concept created by the European Banking Authority for reporting operational risk losses could help banks track emerging risk types and facilitate forward-looking measurements of op risk, experts believe.

Much of the work on a new EU taxonomy, unveiled by the EBA in August 2025 as a regulatory technical standard under the third Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR III), centered on integrating emerging operational risk loss types, such as cyber risk and the growing dependency on third-party vendors. The original taxonomy was designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision more than two decades ago, when some of these risk factors were not on the radar.

To avoid deviating from the existing Basel II-level framework of loss categories, the EBA has added a set of attribute flags that will sit below the seven Level 1 and 26 Level 2 categories.

Waters Wavelength Ep. 344: Hot topics for 2026

This week on the podcast, Tony and Shen discuss topics they think capital markets firms will find most important this year: agentic AI, quantum computing, and—you guessed it—market data.

RBC takes European traders to the Endgame

About a quarter of European equity value is traded at the close, and that share is rising. To capitalize on this trend, RBC has introduced a new closing auction algorithm, Endgame, to break large orders made near the close of trading days into smaller pieces to avoid moving prices and impacting the market.

Every equities exchange in Europe has fixed trading hours, and when the market is closed, trading firms cannot enter buy or sell orders; thus, no trading takes place. Closing prices are determined daily in the closing auction, when exchanges halt continuous trading and begin the process at the end of the trading day.

Typically, this process lasts around five minutes, and data is collected based on demand to buy and sell a security at various price points. An algorithm then calculates the price based on that data, and trades are executed at this price at the end of the auction. A US variant of Endgame launched in 2023, but Europe required a different engine and two extra years of testing.

TMX eyes global expansion in 2026 through data offering

Canadian exchange group TMX is expanding its Datalinx business outside of Canada. To that end, the exchange operator bought Verity, a buy-side research management system, last fall, following its acquisitions of Wall Street Horizon in 2022, and VettaFi in 2023.

The focus on TMX’s data arm is part of an ongoing shift by essentially all exchanges from listings to information. More than half of TMX’s revenue comes from subscription services and Global Insights, which accounts for 44% of the business.

Verity, the result of the 2021 merger of MackeyRMS and text data specialist InsiderScore, offers a data platform that allows investment research teams to browse analytics across 10-Ks/10-Qs, buybacks, IPOs, and more. That data primarily comes from US companies, with TMX now planning to create a similar offering for Canada.

Banks split over AI risk management

Banks are split on AI governance: many treat it as model risk under op risk, while some want enterprise-level oversight. Firms also disagree on whether AI should sit in the first or second line of defense; regulators are surveying banks, and EU rules expect three lines of defense for technology risks.

AI is a transformative technology, with broad implications for banking operations—including the risk function. That implies it should be managed as an enterprise risk, from the top down. But many see the development of an AI function within enterprise risk as a longer project that is unlikely to predate broader AI adoption.

There are also practical reasons for spurning the enterprise approach—at least at the outset. AI systems are ultimately models, and fall within the scope of existing supervisory guidance on model risk management, such as SR 11-7 in the US.

In other news

Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself to Fight AI Misuse, The Wall Street Journal

Actor Matthew McConaughey has been granted eight trademark applications from the US Patent and Trademark Office, as he seeks to combat unauthorized AI usage of his likeness. The trademarks include a seven-second clip of McConaughey standing on a porch, a three-second clip of him sitting in front of a Christmas tree, and audio of him saying “Alright, alright, alright,” his classic line from “Dazed and Confused.”

Audio and visual deepfakes have plagued the internet since ChatGPT’s debut, with OpenAI’s Sora application made specifically for the creation of artificially generated videos based on prompts. While neither McConaughey nor his legal team are sure that these trademarks will stop large language models from capturing and recreating his likeness, they believe that by filing these trademarks, the threat of legal action will deter bad actors from using his image without permission.

Having seen how good he was in “True Detective,” I bet he’d make those threats compelling.