Synchronizing Stock Market Clocks to UTC(NIST)

To reduce the possibility of fraudulent activity and market manipulation, the world’s major stock exchanges require every clock involved in a stock market transaction to be synchronized to agree with a common reference clock that keeps accurate and internationally traceable time. This paper describes a distributed system that synchronizes stock market clocks to UTC(NIST), the national time standard for the United States. This system is currently installed at stock market data centers in the United States, the European Union, and Asia, and meets the time synchronization regulatory requirements for all three regions.