February 15, 2025

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Cboe ‘Speed Bump’ Runs Into SEC Road Block

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Fee has rejected a controversial rule modify that would have permitted Cboe World Marketplaces to put a split-second “speed bump” in the way of an ultrafast buying and selling approach regarded as “latency arbitrage.”

Cboe in June proposed delaying incoming executable orders on its EDGA trade so current market makers would have 4 milliseconds to cancel or modify their orders in reaction to current market-going details.

The proposal sought to handle fears about latency arbitrage, a approach applied by higher-frequency traders to execute orders on a little out-of-date quotations.

But amid opposition from asset administrators and digital buying and selling big Citadel Securities, the SEC issued an order Friday getting the proposal was unfairly discriminatory and Cboe experienced not shown it was “sufficiently tailored to its stated purpose.”

“The Exchange has not shown why a four-millisecond delay is sufficient time to correctly secure a vast selection of current market participants from the latency arbitrage challenge,” the fee explained.

In accordance to The Wall Road Journal, “the SEC has put the brakes — at minimum for now — on the proliferation of pace bumps on U.S. stock exchanges” considering the fact that 2016, when the fee permitted startup IEX Group to turn into a comprehensive-fledged stock trade.

“We are exceptionally disappointed that the SEC has disapproved our proposal to introduce Liquidity Provider Security,” Cboe explained in a statement, making use of its time period for the proposed pace bump.

Where by IEX imposed a brief delay on all orders to get or provide shares, Cboe’s delay would only have applied to orders that come to EDGA looking for to be quickly executed. Supporters of the CBOE proposal explained it would blunt the advantage of higher-frequency traders that use highly-priced technology this sort of as cross-place microwave networks to execute trades as immediately as doable.

But the SEC explained Cboe experienced unsuccessful to display that “liquidity takers use the most current microwave connections and EDGA liquidity companies use regular fiber connections, and liquidity takers are capable to use the resulting pace differential to result latency arbitrage on the Exchange.”

Asset manager BlackRock argued the proposal would “introduce pointless complexity and have a detrimental result on U.S. fairness marketplaces.”

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Cboe World Marketplaces, higher frequency buying and selling, IEX, latency arbitrage, pace bump, U.S. Securities and Exchange Fee