Rules and Regs

Transaction taxes result in more volatile markets, wider bid-ask spreads, greater market impact and a decrease in volume. Those are key findings of a recent study conducted jointly by the Bank of Canada and Rutgers University into the impact of a transaction tax administered by the State of New York until 1981.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed new rules designed to protect against the kinds of technical disruptions that plagued stock exchanges last year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun inspecting how the nation's stock exchanges develop, refine and approve new types of buy and sell orders, in the face of a great proliferation in order types.

After a rocky few years of flash crashes, trading glitches and botched IPOs, the Securities and Exchange Commission may finally be making headway in its battle with the streaming reams of disparate and diffused electronic data that define the modern U.S. securities trading markets.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority is about to pay visits to a wide range of alternative trading systems, in an attempt to make sure they are properly handling customers' orders.

President Obama's nomination of Mary Jo White to be the next chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission brings delay and uncertainty about how equities markets will operate over the long haul, according to participants in industry discussions.

In an interview with Traders Magazine, a senior TD Ameritrade official expressed dismay that the new financial transactions tax being levied by France extends to trading in the United States.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has begun to implement a new set of computer programs that watch for illicit trading patterns across national exchanges, dark pools and brokers' internal pools of orders, as well as alternative trading systems.

A Nasdaq OMX Group plan to allow issuers of exchange-traded funds to pay broker-dealers to make markets in their securities has won a new lease on life.

So long, and thanks for the memories, even if they weren't so good. That might have been outgoing Chairman Mary Schapiro's final lament as she stepped out the door at the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.

With exchanges and operators of alternative trading systems each trooping to Washington this year to complain about the unfair competitive advantages held by the other, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Daniel Gallagher weighed in on the issue recently.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is set to decide by Dec. 8 whether to approve proposals by the Nasdaq Stock Market and NYSE Arca to permit sponsors of exchange-traded funds to pay broker-dealers for making a market in their securities.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association opposes a Nasdaq OMX Group plan to offer algorithmic trading services to its members.

Kill switches are getting the most attention as a means to prevent disorderly trading in the public markets, but exchange "drop copy" reports are increasingly on the radar. At least one big broker-dealer believes the Securities and Exchange Commission should mandate their usage.

Brokerage executives are anxious about mechanisms designed by stock exchanges that will automatically shut off a firm's incoming orders.