The Securities and Exchange Commission denied a bid by U.S. stock exchanges to stay its new rule on market data infrastructure.
A March 24 order denying the stay posted on the agency website said that staying a final agency rule while it can be reviewed is "an extraordinary remedy" and that the exchanges "have not met their burden to demonstrate" that a stay is appropriate.
"The exchanges make no attempt to challenge the merits of the rule or of the three-phase, multiyear transition period that the commission included" to facilitate an orderly transition, the order said.
The new Regulation National Market System rules adopted in December were aimed at improving data quality and data access for all market participants. The market data infrastructure has not been significantly updated in more than 40 years and lagged behind technologies and other data content offered by exchanges, SEC officials said.
Lev Bagramian, senior securities policy adviser at watchdog group Better Markets said the NMS rules would democratize market data and could reduce information asymmetries between market participants.
The exchanges have also sued to stop the new rules. In February, Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange and Cboe Global Markets sued in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, asking that they be declared unlawful. A ruling on the challenge is pending.
