A broker-dealer agreed to settle FINRA charges for Order Audit Trail System ("OATS") reporting and Regulation NMS violations. According to the Letter of Acceptance, Waiver and Consent, the firm: failed to include an information barrier identifier in relevant OATS reports to indicate that the firm relied on information barriers to comply with restrictions on trading ahead of relevant customer orders; failed to submit certain execution reports to OATS; and improperly routed an "intermarket sweep order to a covered exchange priced outside of a least one protected quotation without simultaneously

FINRA encouraged firms to be more engaged in the work of the self-regulatory organization and described the process for filling vacancies on FINRA committees and boards.

In an Investor Alert, FINRA and the SEC Office of Investor Education and Advocacy cautioned investors on the risks associated with "social sentiment investing tools" ( i.e., tools analyzing or aggregating data from social media sources to inform investment decisions). The alert provides tips for investors prior to using such tools.

The SEC Division of Corporation Finance granted no-action relief to an airline chartering business incorporated in Delaware from the registration requirement relating to offering and selling "tokenized" jet cards. The SEC relied on the company's representations that the subject "tokens" are not securities. The SEC's relief was also subject to numerous additional representations. In particular, the SEC noted that: the platform on which the tokens would be used had already been constructed, thus, revenues from the sale of the tokens were not being used to build the necessary technology; the

The SEC provided a "framework for analysis" to help market participants evaluate whether the federal securities laws apply to the offer, sale or resale of a specific digital asset. The framework is based on the "Howey" case, which found that a security exists where there is "[(i)] an investment of money [(ii)] in a common enterprise [(iii)] with a reasonable exception of profits [(iv)] to be derived from the efforts of others." As to the first two elements, the SEC states that, generally, persons pay in some way for the digital asset and "in evaluating digital assets, [the SEC] has found that