Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas remove CORE FIX plans before the order protocol goes live

Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas have moved to remove CORE FIX references from their equity-market rulebooks after abandoning the proposed order-entry protocol before deployment. The SEC published notices dated 3 November covering the Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas rule changes. For brokers and trading-system vendors, the distinction between an abandoned prospective interface and a withdrawn live service is crucial: these are not announcements of an outage or a forced migration for customers already sending orders over standard FIX connections.[1][2][3]

The primary notices identify filings SR-NASDAQ-2026-092 and SR-NasdaqTX-2026-051. Both concern amendments to the relevant exchanges' Equity 4 rules removing references to the CORE FIX order-entry protocol. Related fee notices delete obsolete charges, port descriptions and waivers that would have applied to that service. Administrative references may persist in rulebooks even when a product never reaches production, and removal makes the listed options more representative of available connectivity.[1][2][3]

Nasdaq Texas's fee filing states explicitly that the exchange determined not to deploy CORE FIX. On that basis, deletion of its planned production-port and disaster-recovery charges does not amount to a price reduction for existing clients. A firm that had budgeted for the proposed interface may revise its implementation plans, but one already using another supported protocol should not infer its live connectivity is being discontinued.[1][2][3]

The SEC's notices are filings with immediate effectiveness and public-comment procedures; they do not announce a replacement protocol, new operational latency or altered exchange matching logic. The effect on routing configuration depends on whether a member had designed a future system around CORE FIX and whether any integration work had progressed beyond planning. That is a narrower and more actionable question than the generic claim that Nasdaq is dropping FIX.[1][2][3]

Trading firms should cross-check each venue's current protocol catalogue and member notifications, particularly where a vendor's product roadmap still includes CORE FIX as a configurable option. Deleting a dormant selection can avoid software maintenance and test-environment work, but it is not in itself proof of improvements to throughput, resilience or execution quality.[1][2][3]

The Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas filings remove a planned CORE FIX interface from rules before it has been brought into ordinary production use. That is materially different from shutting down the established Nasdaq FIX interfaces that order-routing clients already depend on. In a change-control inventory, the two removals should be recorded as cancellation of a prospective protocol rather than evidence of a trading outage, a mandatory migration deadline or a live customer-connectivity failure. Broker technology teams need to confirm the actual enabled ports and permitted session types with their individual venue accounts.[1]

The common feature across the venues is cancellation before commercial deployment. The evidence supports a defined scope—Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas equity-rule references—not a conclusion about all Nasdaq-operated markets, every FIX connection or the future of FIX as a widely used trading protocol.[1][2][3]

Report an error or submit an update