Consolidated Tape Association (CTA)

The CTA oversees market data for securities listed on the NYSE through Tape A and for equities traded on other NYSE-affiliated venues—including NYSE Arca, NYSE American, NYSE Chicago, IEX, and Cboe's BYX, BZX, EDGA, and EDGX—through Tape B. It was formed in 1974 to administer the Consolidated Tape Plan and is one of two Securities Information Processors (SIPs) designated by the SEC to aggregate and distribute US equities data.

Since its establishment, SIPs have consolidated trade and quote data from all SEC-registered exchanges and trading venues. Exchanges that trade Network A and Network B securities are required to send their trade and quote data to a central processor, which creates the Consolidated Tape System (CTS) and Consolidated Quote System (CQS). These data streams are then disseminated globally, providing a standardized view of NYSE-listed equities across markets.

Before SIPs, market participants didn't have a centralized source for trade and quote information, making it difficult to identify the best available prices across venues. SIPs were designed to:

• Calculate the best bid and offer prices across exchanges, later formalized as the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) under Regulation NMS in 2005.
• Support critical regulatory mechanisms, such as market-wide circuit breakers and, more recently, Limit-Up Limit-Down (LULD) price bands introduced in 2013.

However, as exchanges began offering faster and more detailed proprietary feeds, the limitations of SIPs became increasingly apparent. To address these challenges, the SEC has approved a competing consolidator model, which aims to modernize market data infrastructure by introducing competition into the role traditionally filled by SIPs.

For example, Databento's US Equities service enables users to calculate a more precise NBBO than SIP data by aggregating proprietary feeds from 15 exchanges and 30 ATSes. These feeds offer significantly greater granularity, including order-level data and speed advantages critical for latency-sensitive strategies. Despite these advancements, SIPs are likely to remain a baseline option for market participants requiring only top-of-book data or more cost-effective solutions.