The SEC is proposing two alternatives for amending rules that govern money market mutual funds pursuant toRule 2a-7 under the Investment Company Act. The release provides a substantial discussion of the role of money market funds in the 2008 financial crisis, as well as some discussion of prior and subsequent valuation and liquidity problems experienced by money market funds. According to the SEC, the two alternatives proposed by the SEC are designed to address money market funds' susceptibility to heavy redemptions, improve their ability to manage and mitigate potential contagion from such

The NFA release d a Notice to Members concerning the implementation of Phase 2 of Financial Requirements Section 4, which requires FCMs that hold customer segregated funds to instruct the depositories holding these funds to report the balances in these accounts on a daily basis. Under Financial Requirements Section 4, a depository must comply with this request in order to be considered an acceptable depository for customer segregated funds. CME Group has adopted similar requirements for its FCM clearing members. Phase 2 requires (i) clearing FCMs (including foreign brokers) that carry customer

In a speech at the SIFMA Tech Conference, Associate Director Berman discussed how the Flash Crash of May 5, 2010, motivated the SEC to initiate the MIDAS project. After significant input from vendors, MIDAS was designed to enable the SEC to readily collect and analyze all trade and quota data from the public tapes for equities. Berman further explained that the potential uses of MIDAS are numerous but can be broken down generally into three categories: Real-time monitoring of market activities; Forensic analysis of market events; and Market structure research that can more fully inform

The MFA released its June Policy Brief, focusing on important global hedge fund industry headlines, as well as recent MFA advocacy and education initiatives. This month's stories include: MFA's recommendations to the FSOC on the matter of strengthening protections for non-public, sensitive and proprietary information. MFA, FIA, SIFMA, AMG and ICI's joint comment letter to the CFTC seeking to extend the compliance time for the bunched order rule. A WSJ op-ed by Bob Rice on the performance of hedge funds. The introduction of "What is a Hedge Fund?" - the first of a series of videos geared toward

The MSRB released new educational videos as a contribution to its "Investor Toolkit," which is an online resource for investors navigating the municipal securities market. The new educational videos are for municipal securities investors and explain what they should expect from their brokers when investing in the municipal securities market. The MSRB also provides educational resources for state and local governments that issue municipal securities in its State and Local Government Toolkit. See: MSRB Press Release to learn more.