Cross-market surveillance

Cross-market surveillance joins data from several venues or several instruments to detect schemes that are invisible in any one of them, such as moving a futures price to profit in the related cash market.

market microstructure · updated 2026-09-08

Where does cross-market surveillance come up?

This term is used in the following manipulation techniques, each explained in full on its own page.

• Cash versus derivatives schemes — A cash versus derivatives scheme establishes a large derivative position and then trades the smaller underlying market at a deliberate loss, in order to move the reference price the derivative settles against.
• Settlement price manipulation — Settlement price manipulation is trading to move an official settlement price, because that price determines margin, portfolio marks and the payoff on contracts many times larger than the trading itself.

Enforcement actions involving these techniques

See also

• Consolidated Audit Trail — The Consolidated Audit Trail is the US system that collects order and trade data across all national securities exchanges and FINR…
• Surveillance — Surveillance, in a market context, is the automated monitoring of order and trade data for patterns that suggest abuse. Exchanges,…

Terms that refer here

Consolidated Audit Trail · Surveillance

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