Consolidated Options Audit Trail System (COATS)

What this video covers

• Why COATS is reached indirectly through systemization, approved order forms, and approved proprietary systems, rather than through a rule listing every audit-trail field
• How electronic orders are systematized, how receipt timestamps establish time ranking, and why non-electronic orders must be entered contemporaneously upon receipt and before representation
• Who carries the recordkeeping duty for hand-signal initiations, cancellations, and changes, including the Trading Permit Holder (TPH) signaling the order
• The eight minimum fields required before representing a non-electronic market or marketable order, plus why additional instructions must still be entered contemporaneously
• The 100-leg complex-order limit, the 16-leg electronic-only limit, and why splitting tickets requires exchange permission and linked tickets
• The written-record outage procedure, including receipt times, immediate resumption, and the close-of-business deadline for backfilling paper tickets
• How approved proprietary systems capture exact-format data, transmit it daily, and keep clocks within one second of the NIST atomic clock, with timestamps for systemization, execution, modification, and cancellation