SEC Releases Amendments to Regulation NMS

The SEC has released a final rule that amends its Regulation National Market System (NMS) “to adopt an additional minimum pricing increment, or ‘tick size,’ for the quoting of certain NMS stocks, reduce the access fee caps for protected quotations of trading centers, increase the transparency of exchange fees and rebates, and accelerate the implementation of rules that will make information about the market’s best priced, smaller-sized orders publicly available.” The final rule is intended to “reduce transaction costs and improve market quality for all investors and to help ensure that orders placed in the [NMS] reflect the best prices available for all investors.”

For more information, see the press release and fact sheet — as well as the statements by SEC Chair Gary Gensler and Commissioners Hester Peirce, Caroline Crenshaw, Mark Uyeda, and Jaime Lizárraga — on the SEC’s Web site.