The SEC approved the FINRA-proposed rule change to amend FINRA Rule 11892 to add new provisions that address multi-day clearly erroneous events and transactions occurring during trading halts, as well as make non-substantive clarifications to the rule. See: SEC Order of Approval. Related news: FINRA-Proposed Rule Change Relating to Clearly Erroneous Transactions in Exchange-Listed Securities (Fed. Reg.)(May 6, 2014); Proposed Rule Change to Amend FINRA Rule 11892 (April 17, 2014); FINRA-Proposed Rule Change to Extend the Clearly Erroneous Pilot Program for Exchange-Listed Securities (Fed. Reg

The SEC published for comment proposed amendments to regulations under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") to allow the SEC to collect fees that reflect its actual costs, add an appeals time frame, and clarify other issues in the regulations. According to the SEC, the proposed amendments: (i) provide a formula for fees charged to FOIA requesters, (ii) incorporate a time frame in which a FOIA requester must file an appeal in the event a request or a portion thereof is denied, (iii) allow for submission of FOIA appeals by email or facsimile, and (iv) allow the Office of FOIA Services to

The House Financial Services Committee approved two bills regarding the authority and transparency of the Financial Stability Oversight Council ("FSOC"). H.R. 4881, which was agreed to as amended, places a one-year moratorium on the authority of the FSOC to make financial stability determinations. The bill was approved 32-27 and would prevent the FSOC from designating any new insurance companies or asset managers as "systemically important" for one year as Congress continues to review the FSOC's process for deeming bank and non-bank institutions to be significant. H.R. 4387, or the FSOC

The National Futures Association ("NFA") barred and fined futures commission merchant ("FCM") Vision Financial Markets ("Vision Financial") and commodity trading adviser ("CTA") Ace Investment Strategists ("Ace Investment") from membership for misappropriating customer funds related to trade allocations. According to the complaint, Vision Financial facilitated Ace Investment's actions, even though the firm was in a position to identity and stop the abuses. The complaint stated that Vision Financial has had a "long history of supervisory issues," as it has been a subject of four prior

The CFTC released to the public an authorized research paper titled, "Electronic Market Makers, Trader Anonymity and Market Fragility." The paper, which was written by third-party professors, analyzes the impact of electronic market-makers on the reliability and the consistency with which financial markets provide transactional liquidity services, based on monitoring intraday position-level data from the WTI Crude Oil futures markets collected from NYMEX between 2006 and 2011. Researchers found "strong evidence that electronic market makers reduce their participation and their liquidity