yeah lets screw the small investor's even more...lets make the listed stocks even more manipulated.
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. Wednesday December 1, 6:23 pm Eastern Time
SEC Expected To Lighten NYSE Rules
By MARCY GORDON
AP Business Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators are expected to move soon toward knocking down some of the barriers protecting the New York Stock Exchange from competitors.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is scheduled to vote next week on the changes, which would make it easier for regional exchanges, dealers that are not NYSE members and, eventually, the electronic trading networks to trade stocks listed on the Big Board.
The proposal concerning the electronic networks also would have to be approved by the National Association of Securities Dealers, the self-policing brokers' group that operates the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The proposed changes are designed to promote greater competition in the securities markets, an SEC official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The SEC also plans to seek public comment on a discussion paper it is producing on how much the nation's stock exchanges should charge brokerage firms for real-time stock quotations. The fees, which totaled an estimated $414 million last year, help pay for the exchanges' operations and market oversight.
That issue has pitted the exchanges against online brokers such as Charles Schwab and Ameritrade.
''It may seem like nickel-and-dime stuff, but nickels and dimes add up,'' said Marc Beauchamp, spokesman for the North American Securities Administrators Association. Brokerage firms can pass some of these fees on to individual investors.
''The cost of trading is very important to Main Street investors,'' he said.
In considering the proposals, the SEC commissioners ''want to open things up without unduly interfering'' in the securities markets, David Ruder, a former SEC chairman who is a professor at Northwestern University Law School, said in a telephone interview.
The proliferation in the past year or so of several competitive electronic communications networks, known as ECNs, where trades are matched instantly, has forced the 207-year-old NYSE to rethink how it does business.
Both the NYSE -- the world's biggest stock exchange -- and its fierce competitor, the all-electronic Nasdaq Stock Market, are considering selling public stakes in their markets to raise money and increase their flexibility in order to keep pace with the fast-moving ECNs.
Bernard Madoff, head of Madoff Securities, a New York company that matches buy and sell orders on Nasdaq, praised what he sees as an effort by the SEC to open up competition in the markets.
Madoff predicted the regulators' move will hasten improvements to the existing links between the various stock markets, thereby giving investors easier access to the best stock price and making for more efficient markets.
The enhanced competition ''will allow more business to be done in more places -- and that's good for everybody,'' he said.
The changes being weighed by the SEC, first reported in Wednesday's editions of The Wall Street Journal, also include a proposal that would allows regional stock exchanges to trade NYSE initial public offerings of stock, known as IPOs, on the first day of trading. The regional exchanges currently must wait until the second day. The SEC would seek public comment on the proposal.
An NYSE spokesman had no immediate comment on the anticipated SEC action.
In a related move, the NYSE itself is expected to vote Thursday to eliminate a rule forbidding member firms from trading stocks that were listed on the Big Board before 1979 anywhere but on the floor of a traditional stock exchange.
NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said recently he expects the exchange's board to decide to drop the rule. By doing so, the exchange will essentially open trading in all of its listed shares to competition for the first time. |
