Broker-Dealer Fined for Overstatement of Daily Trading Volume

A broker-dealer settled FINRA charges for overstating the firm's daily trading volume by nearly 148,000,000 shares on Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters, subscriber-based market data platforms.

In a Letter of Acceptance, Waiver, and Consent, FINRA found that the broker-dealer's advertising software suffered from an error that caused the system to advertise certain options trades as equity transactions from December 2016 to June 2018. In a separate instance, the broker-dealer's order management system caused certain trades routed between one of its trading desks and its electronic trading desk to be counted twice in advertised numbers. FINRA said that both failures were due in part to an inadequate supervisory system that was out of compliance with FINRA rules.

FINRA determined that the overstatement violated FINRA Rule 2010 ("Standards of Commercial Honor and Principles of Trade"), FINRA Rule 3110 ("Supervision") and FINRA Rule 5210 ("Publication of Transactions and Quotations"). To settle the charges, the broker-dealer agreed to (i) a censure and (ii) a $200,000 fine.