Suspicious Transaction & Order Report (STOR)
The mandatory regulatory filing made by investment firms, venues and crypto-asset service providers when they identify activity that may amount to market abuse.
Definition
A Suspicious Transaction and Order Report (STOR) is the regulatory filing that an investment firm, trading venue or - under MiCA - a CASP must submit to the national competent authority when it has a reasonable suspicion that one or more orders or transactions may constitute insider dealing, market manipulation or attempted abuse.
What goes in a STOR
- Identification of the reporting firm.
- Description of the suspicious orders or transactions with timestamps, volumes, instruments and parties (where known).
- The reason the firm considers the activity suspicious - narrative and supporting indicators.
- Any related communications or background context.
- The reporting firm's actions, if any, taken in response.
Regulatory anchor
MAR Article 16 obliges "persons professionally arranging or executing transactions" to maintain surveillance and to file STORs without delay. ESMA's RTS on STOR notification specifies form and content. MiCA Article 92 extends the obligation to crypto-asset service providers.
Common quality issues
Supervisors routinely flag three weaknesses: over-reporting (low-quality, threshold-driven filings that erode signal); under-reporting (analyst-team capacity bottleneck); and missing evidentiary trail linking the alert that surfaced the case to the report that left the building. A robust audit trail from market data to STOR is what regulators check first.