The SEC voted to renew the charter of the Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee ("EMSAC"). The charter is valid until August 2017. The EMSAC serves as the formal mechanism through which the SEC receives advice and recommendations about equity market structure issues.
At the November 29, 2016 meeting, EMSAC considered several revised recommendations from the Market Quality Subcommittee and Customer Issues Subcommittee. In a summary of the meeting, the Delta Strategy Group listed the following "key takeaways":
- EMSAC approved the Market Quality Subcommittee's recommendations to (i) eliminate the halt-and-reopening auction process with regard to the re-aggregation of liquidity, (ii) widen price bands on market-wide circuit breakers, and (iii) require all exchanges to open trading at 9:30 a.m. or as close to that time as possible.
- EMSAC rejected the Customer Issues Subcommittee's recommendation concerning the monitoring of investor confidence in the equity markets. EMSAC approved a second recommendation to enhance order-handling disclosures and modify Regulation NMS Rules 605 and 606 accordingly.
- The Reg. NMS Subcommittee reported that it will make a recommendation concerning Regulation NMS Rule 611 (the "Order Protection Rule") in the near future. The Trading Venues Regulation Subcommittee affirmed that it "will work on recommendations to SRO liability rules, regulatory centralization and consolidated market data."
Several of the subcommittees' recommendations were considered previously at an earlier EMSAC meeting on July 28, 2016.
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