Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) initiative, which will give regulators a means to efficiently track all trades in real time, moved one giant step closer to reality with a call for public comments. Once completed, the CAT would be the largest and most sophisticated financial database ever built, absorbing all trading activity in the U.S. equity and options markets nearly instantaneously, from the time of order inception through routing, cancellation, modification, or execution.
