While signing up on TrendSpider, you are required to fill out a compliance survey form consisting of the 11 questions and submit exchange agreements that are necessary to identify if you qualify as a professional investor or not in the eyes of the U.S Securities and Exchanges.
The United States exchanges like NYSE, NASDAQ, and others have an extensive definition of who will be treated as a professional investor when it comes to using their real-time market data.
It is the responsibility of every user signing up on TrendSpider to provide complete and accurate answers to these questions and to inform our support team of any changes to the status should they occur in the future.
In this documentation, we will explore:
- Professional Investor Vs. Non-Professional Investor
- Qualifying as a Non-Professional Or Professional Investor
- How Paid Data vs Free Data Work
Let’s get started 🚀
Professional Investor Vs. Non-Professional Investor
During the registration process, we ask the users to answer 11 questions to determine their professional or non-professional investor status. You will be qualified as a professional investor if you answer NO to the first question or YES to any of the questions numbered #2 to #11 as listed below.
However, if you will answer YES to the first question and NO to all other questions, then such an investor will be considered a Non-professional investor under this definition.
Note*: You cannot change your answers once you proceed.*
#1 Do you use Market Data solely for your personal, non-business use?
#2 Do you receive Market Data for your business or any other entity?
#3 Are you currently registered or qualified with the SEC or the CFTC?
#4 Are you currently registered or qualified with any securities agency, any securities exchange, association or regulatory body, or any commodities or futures contract market, association, or regulatory body in the United States or otherwise?
#5 Whether you are located within or outside the United States, do you perform any functions that are similar to those that require an individual to register or qualify with the SEC, the CFTC, any other securities agency or regulatory body, any securities exchange or association, or any commodities or futures contract market, association or regulatory body?
#6 Are you engaged to provide investment advice to any individual or entity?
#7 Are you engaged as an asset manager?
#8 Do you use the capital of any other individual or entity in the conduct of your trading?
#9 Do you conduct trading for the benefit of a corporation, partnership, or any other entity?
#10 Have you entered into any agreement to share the profit of your trading activities or receive compensation for your trading activities?
#11 Are you receiving office space, equipment, or other benefits in exchange for your trading or work as a financial consultant to any person, firm, or business entity?
Qualifying as a Non-Professional Or Professional Investor
If you qualify as a Non-Professional investor, you will receive free and immediate access to market data from TrendSpider’s exchange partners.
If you qualify as a professional investor, you may be required to complete additional documentation provided by one or more exchanges before we extend you the access to market data that requires entitlement control.
As a professional investor, you will have to remain in compliance with exchange regulations at all times as well as your professional licenses and you will also be billed for access to certain market data feeds.
The exchange fee for professionals to access Nasdaq U.S Equity data is $29 per month, if applicable. This payment will be billed by TrendSpider on behalf of the exchange, or it may be billed by the exchange directly to you, depending on the exchange regulations.
Futures Professional Entitlements require a direct CME Exchange Fee - please contact sales for a quotation.
Note: TrendSpider is required to provide monthly reports to all market data partners and exchanges to indicate who is receiving the data and whether or not they are considered professional.
Data Entitlement Management
Entitlement means your account is allowed to accept a particular data feed and is approved to receive said data by the exchange. If you do not log in once every 60 days and open a chart, or have active alerts or bots in your account, TrendSpider's system will not renew your entitlement automatically. This does not mean you lose access to data or anything changes, and this will not impact your service, however when you do eventually return and log back in again, you will simply have to resubmit your data survey to reactivate data. There will be no additional fees for reconnecting your data entitlements. Please note, this automatic un-entitlement does not disable billing on paid data services. If you wish to cancel a paid data feed, please contact support.