Wall Street Seizes Opportunity to Gut SEC Trading Surveillance (2)

After 14 years of debate, the Securities and Exchange Commission is in the final stages of bringing a powerful new surveillance tool fully online. But Wall Street is seizing on the ideal political environment for a last-ditch attempt to kill it.

The Consolidated Audit Trail is a database, one of the largest ever created, that is set to revolutionize how the agency monitors trading activity and spots potential misconduct. By its May 31 industry compliance deadline, it will collect almost all US trading data, as many as 500 billion records a day, and give the SEC a live window into ...