Joint Industry Plan; Order Approving an Amendment to the National Market System Plan Establishing Procedures Under Rule 605 of Regulation NMS, as Modified by the Commission, To Reflect Recent Amendments to Rule 605 of Regulation NMS

<NOTICE> SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION <DEPDOC>[Release No. 34-103939; File No. 4-518]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Joint Industry Plan; Order Approving an Amendment to the National Market System Plan Establishing Procedures Under Rule 605 of Regulation NMS, as Modified by the Commission, To Reflect Recent Amendments to Rule 605 of Regulation NMS</SUBJECT> <DATE>September 10, 2025.</DATE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> On May 30, 2025, <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> FINRA, on behalf of itself and the parties  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> to the National Market System Plan Establishing Procedures Under Rule 605 of Regulation NMS (the “Rule 605 NMS Plan” or “Plan”), filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”), pursuant to Section 11A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act” or “Act”)  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> and Rule 608 of Regulation National Market System (“NMS”) thereunder, <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> a proposal to amend the Rule 605 NMS Plan. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> The proposal represents the first substantive amendment to the Plan (“Proposed Amendment”) and proposes to reflect the Commission's recent amendments to Rule 605  <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> and to make certain technical updates to modernize the operation of the Plan. These changes were unanimously approved by the Participants. The Proposed Amendment was published for comment in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 17, 2025. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> The Commission has not received any comments on the Proposed Amendment. This order approves the Proposed Amendment to the Plan, as modified herein with changes that the Commission deems are appropriate to reflect the addition of 24X as a Participant. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The Commission finds that the Proposed Amendment, as modified, is appropriate in the public interest, for the protection of investors and the maintenance of fair and orderly markets, to remove impediments to, and perfect the mechanism of a national market system, or is otherwise in furtherance of the purposes of the Act. <SU>9</SU> <FTREF/> A copy of the Proposed Amendment, marked to reflect the technical modifications the Commission has made, is attached in Appendix A to this order. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> letter from Robert McNamee, Vice President and Associate General Counsel, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) dated May 30, 2025 (“Transmittal Letter”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  The current parties to the Plan (“Participants”) are: 24X National Exchange LLC (“24X”); Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc.; Cboe BYX Exchange, Inc.; Cboe EDGA Exchange, Inc.; Cboe EDGX Exchange, Inc.; FINRA; Investors Exchange LLC; Long-Term Stock Exchange, Inc.; MEMX LLC; MIAX PEARL, LLC; Nasdaq BX, Inc.; Nasdaq PHLX LLC; The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC; New York Stock Exchange, LLC; NYSE American LLC; NYSE Arca Inc.; NYSE Texas, Inc.; and NYSE National Inc. As discussed further below, 24X became a Participant on July 8, 2025. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  15 U.S.C. 78k-1. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  17 CFR 242.608. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  On April 21, 2001, the Commission approved a NMS plan for the purpose of establishing procedures for market centers to follow in making their monthly reports available to the public under Rule 11Ac1-5 under the Exchange Act (n/k/a Rule 605 of Regulation NMS (“Rule 605”)) (“Original Rule 605 NMS Plan Order”). <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 44177 (April 12, 2001), 66 FR 19814 (April 17, 2001). The Plan has been amended ten times since it was approved by the Commission, in each case solely to add new Participants to the Plan and most recently in July 2025. <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 103482 (July 17, 2025), 90 FR 34528 (July 22, 2025) (adding 24X as a Participant in the Plan) (“24X Amendment”). The Plan has not been substantively amended since it was originally approved by the Commission in 2001. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>   <E T="03">See infra</E> note 11 and accompanying text. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 103243 (June 12, 2025), 90 FR 25721 (June 17, 2025) (“Notice”). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  On July 8, 2025, 24X filed the 24X Amendment, which modified the Plan to add 24X as a Participant by adding 24X's name in Section II(a) of the Plan and adding its single-digit code in Section VI(a)(1) of the Plan. The 24X Amendment became effective immediately upon filing pursuant to Rule 608(b)(3)(iii) of Regulation NMS, 17 CFR 242.608(b)(3)(iii), because it involved solely technical or ministerial matters. <E T="03">See</E> 24X Amendment, <E T="03">supra</E> note 5. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>9</SU>  17 CFR 242.608(b)(2). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Description of the Proposal</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Background</HD> The Plan sets forth procedures for Rule 605 reporting entities to follow in making available to the public their monthly reports on execution quality in NMS stocks in a uniform, readily accessible, and usable electronic format. Currently, Section IV of the Plan provides an overview of the procedures under the Plan for reporting entities to make available to the public their Rule 605 reports in the form of electronic data files that meet the requirements set forth in Sections V and VI of the Plan. Section V of the Plan specifies the file type, compression, and naming requirements for Rule 605 reports, and Section VI of the Plan sets forth the required file structure to be used to publish the monthly reports. Sections VII, VIII, and IX of the Plan set forth requirements for making reports available to the public and detail the functions of a Designated Participant. <SU>10</SU> <FTREF/> Sections I, II, III, X, XI, and XII of the Plan pertain to administrative and operational matters, including definitions used in the Plan, specification of regular trading hours under the Plan, procedures for amending the Plan, and withdrawal of a Participant from the Plan. <FTNT> <SU>10</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Section I of the Plan (defining the term “Designated Participant” as the Participant with which each reporting entity “has made the arrangements set forth in Section VIII of the Plan”). </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Description of the Proposal</HD> On March 6, 2024, the Commission adopted amendments to Rule 605, which, among other things, expand the scope of entities subject to Rule 605 (including larger broker-dealers, in addition to market centers), modify the categorization and content of information required to be disclosed in the detailed execution quality reports published under Rule 605 (including by modifying the scope of covered orders subject to disclosures), and require reporting entities to produce a summary report of execution quality in addition to the existing detailed disclosures regarding execution quality for covered orders in NMS stocks. <SU>11</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>11</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Securities Exchange Act Release No. 99679 (March 6, 2024), 89 FR 26428 (April 15, 2024) (“Rule 605 Amendments”). When adopting the Rule 605 Amendments, the Commission stated that “the Rule 605 NMS Plan will need to be updated to: (1) incorporate references to broker-dealers subject to Rule 605; (2) account for summary reports that will be required under Rule 605(a)(2); and (3) incorporate the new data fields that will be required under Rule 605(a)(1) for the detailed reports.” <E T="03">Id.</E> at 26496. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Changes To Incorporate Rule 605 Amendments</HD> The Participants propose to amend the Plan to conform to the recent amendments to Rule 605 in several aspects. The Participants propose to amend the Plan to add references to brokers and dealers, in addition to market centers, in each instance where such reporting entities are referenced in the Plan. <SU>12</SU> <FTREF/> In addition, the Participants propose to amend the Plan to include references to the new summary reports required under paragraph (a)(2) of Rule 605 in Sections IV, VII, <SU>13</SU> <FTREF/> and VIII of the Plan establishing procedures to make Rule 605 reports publicly available. The new summary reports would be made available in the same place, and in accordance with the same procedures, as the detailed reports. <SU>14</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>12</SU>  The Rule 605 Amendments also clarify the separate treatment of single dealer platforms and alternative trading systems for purposes of Rule 605 reports. The Proposed Amendment would also update footnotes in the Plan to reflect these clarifications. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>13</SU>  The Participants also propose to amend Section VII to clarify that a market center, broker, or dealer shall make available the files containing the monthly reports for a period of three years from the initial date of posting on the internet site of the market center, broker, or dealer, as required by Rule 605(a)(5). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>14</SU>  The Commission stated in the Rule 605 Amendments that “final Rule 605(a)(2) requires the use of the Commission's schema for CSV format and associated PDF renderer, and therefore the Rule 605 NMS Plan does not establish the formats and fields for the summary report.” <E T="03">See</E> Rule 605 Amendments, 89 FR 26428, 26490 n.846. Accordingly, the Participants are not proposing any specifications with respect to the summary reports in Sections V and VI of the Plan. </FTNT> The Participants also propose to remove obsolete data fields and incorporate the new data fields required by Rule 605(a)(1) to be reflected in the detailed monthly reports. Specifically, the Participants propose to remove the existing text of Section VI(a) and instead incorporate by reference a new Exhibit A to the Plan. Exhibit A sets forth, in tabular format, ea ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━