SEC Spring 2025 Regulatory Agenda
The SEC has published its semi-annual Spring 2025 regulatory agenda (“Agenda”) and plans for rulemaking. The Agenda is published twice a year, and for several years I have blogged about each publication. Although items on the Agenda can move from one category to the next, be dropped off altogether, or new items pop up in any of the categories (including the final rule stage), the Agenda provides valuable insight into the SEC’s plans and the influence that comments can make on the rulemaking process.
The Agenda is broken down by (i) Prerule Stage; (ii) Proposed Rule Stage; (iii) Final Rule Stage; and (iv) Long-term Actions. The Prerule, Proposed and Final Rule Stages are intended to be completed within the next 12 months and Long-term Actions are anything beyond that. In what is the shortest Agenda I have seen, the number of items to be completed in a 12-month time frame is 23, down from 30 on the Fall 2024 Agenda
SEC Report On Meme Stocks
On October 18, 2021, the SEC released a report on the meme stock craze that caused the securities of companies like GameStop Corp. to soar to unprecedented high trading prices and volume. Commissioners Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman criticized the report as being used as an excuse to add or consider adding additional regulations in the areas of conflicts of interest, payment for order flow, off-exchange trading, and wholesale market making when, however, no causal connection between the meme stock trading and these other factors has been established. I found the report interesting for the background and discussion on the U.S. trading markets.
Market Structure
From the perspective of individual investors, the lifecycle of a stock trade starts with an investor placing an order through an account they establish with a broker-dealer. The broker-dealer then routes the order for execution to a trading center, such as a national securities exchange, an alternative trading system (“ATS”), or an off-exchange market
Recommendations Of SEC Government-Business Forum On Small Business Capital Formation
In early April, the SEC Office of Small Business Policy published the 2016 Final Report on the SEC Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, a forum I had the honor of attending and participating in. As required by the Small Business Investment Incentive Act of 1980, each year the SEC holds a forum focused on small business capital formation. The goal of the forum is to develop recommendations for government and private action to eliminate or reduce impediments to small business capital formation.
The forum is taken seriously by the SEC and its participants, including the NASAA, and leading small business and professional organizations. The forum began with short speeches by each of the SEC commissioners and a panel discussion, following which attendees, including myself, worked in breakout sessions to drill down on specific issues and suggest changes to rules and regulations to help support small business capital formation, as well as the related, secondary trading markets. In
