[ by Howard Haykin ]

The MSRB recently proposed a rule amendment that would provide for more rapid public dissemination of trade size information for municipal securities transactions valued between $1 million and $5 million through the MSRB Real-Time Transaction Reporting System (RTRS).

RTRS is the centralized system for collection and market-wide dissemination of all transactions in municipal securities by dealers. Transaction data is published on the MSRB’s Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) website on a real-time basis for free public access and also is offered on a subscription basis to, among others, market data vendors.

Currently, transaction information disseminated from RTRS and published on the EMMA website on a real-time basis is limited in nature and value.  It shows par value on all transactions with a value of $1 million or less, but uses just an indicator of “1MM+” in place of the par value for 5 business days following transactions where the value is greater than $1 million.

MSRB's rule proposal would change that by enhancing the transaction data that's made available to the public - specifically displaying the exact par value of trades up to $5 million.  An indicator of “MM+” would be used where par value is greater than $5 million.  Five business days after the trade, RTRS would disseminate and the EMMA website would display the exact par value of trades of $5 million or more.

MSRB Executive Director Lynnette Kelly had this to say:  "The MSRB believes disseminating the exact trade size of all transactions under $5 million in real time is an appropriate first step toward ensuring the fairest and most accurate pricing of municipal securities transactions.  The MSRB plans to continue to evaluate whether this threshold can be raised further or even eliminated to achieve the goal of more complete and immediate price transparency in the municipal market."
 

For further details, go to:  [MSRB Press Release, 8/24/12] and [MSRB RegNote 12-45,8/24/12].