(Bloomberg) -- Nasdaq Inc. and Cboe Global Markets Inc., two of the biggest stock exchanges, challenged a new US Securities and Exchange Commission rule that changes the economic structure of how stocks trade.
The firms asked a court to review the SEC’s recently finalized national market structure regulation, also known as Reg-NMS, according to a petition, which they said was lodged with a United States appeals court in Washington.
“The SEC’s recently adopted amendments to certain Reg NMS rules fall short of supporting these principles and will inhibit price discovery, leading us to file a petition for review,” Cboe said in a statement to Bloomberg Thursday.
The agency approved a rule last month that lowered fees that exchanges charge brokers to access the best displayed prices on their venue. Those caps help ensure that market participants have fair access to the best displayed prices, the SEC said at the time of the vote.
But large exchanges like Nasdaq and Cboe have said lowering the access fee could make it more costly for them to lure some trade orders to their platforms and away from wholesale trading firms like Citadel Securities and Virtu Financial.
Nasdaq said that the rule “threatens to worsen outcomes for investors, listed companies, and the US equity markets,” according to a separate statement.
“The commission undertakes rulemaking consistent with its authorities and laws governing the administrative process and will vigorously defend the final rules in court,” an SEC spokesperson said by email.
Notably, the New York Stock Exchange, the largest exchange, is not a party to the joint Cboe and Nasdaq petition.
The SEC rule is among a slew of market-structure overhauls proposed under SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure. The agency approved one measure earlier this year to require brokers to give better disclosure about the execution quality they offer traders which has not been litigated. Two other measures proposed in the four-rule suite in December 2022 are still pending.
(Updates with SEC comment in seventh paragraph.)
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.