Indications of interest have been in the news quite a bit over the past few years, as dark pools increasingly diversified their services. The rap on IOIs is that they've proved to be an easy tool used by some to game the system. Traders now reports that FINRA has again warned broker dealers that they must be truthful when they send out natural IOIs via their order management systems or a service provider.

This follows some previous warnings. For example, when they send out a natural IOI, they must "be sure the information is accurate and not purposefully misleading" and they "must have natural orders in hand and for the size they're advertising." Now one has to wonder whether these warnings are going unheeded. The danger in this climate is that regulators decide to take up the cause in a big way, like they did with flash orders. That is not an ideal situation. It would be far superior for the industry to come up with their own fixes. You might think IOIs are so arcane that no politician would touch it. We used to think the same of flash orders.

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