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SEC Adopts Rule to Increase Transparency Into Short Selling and Amendment to CAT NMS Plan for Purposes of Short Sale Data Collection
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2023-221

Washington D.C., Oct. 13, 2023 —
The Securities and Exchange Commission today adopted new Rule 13f-2 to provide greater transparency to investors and other market participants by increasing the public availability of short sale related data. Congress directed the SEC in Section 929X of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 to promulgate rules to make certain short sale data publicly available.

“In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Congress directed the SEC to enhance the transparency of short selling of equity securities,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “Today’s adoption will promote greater transparency about short selling both to regulators and the public. This rule addresses Congress’s mandate and improves upon existing sources of short sale-related data in the equity markets. Given past market events, it’s important for the Commission and the public to know more about short sale activity in the equity markets, especially in times of stress or volatility.”

Specifically, Rule 13f-2 will require institutional investment managers that meet or exceed certain thresholds to report on Form SHO specified short position data and short activity data for equity securities. The Commission will aggregate the resulting data by security, thereby maintaining the confidentiality of the reporting managers, and publicly disseminate the aggregated data via EDGAR on a delayed basis. This new data will supplement the short sale data that is currently publicly available.

Relatedly, the Commission today also adopted an amendment to the National Market System Plan (NMS Plan) governing the consolidated audit trail (CAT). The amendment to the NMS Plan governing the CAT (CAT NMS Plan) will require each CAT reporting firm that is reporting short sales to indicate when it is asserting use of the bona fide market making exception in Rule 203(b)(2)(iii) of Regulation SHO.

The adopting release for Rule 13f-2 and related Form SHO, as well as the notice of the amendment to the CAT NMS Plan, will be published in the Federal Register. The final rule, Form SHO, and the amendment to the CAT NMS Plan will become effective 60 days after publication of the adopting release in the Federal Register. The compliance date for Rule 13f-2 and Form SHO will be 12 months after the effective date of the adopting release, with public aggregated reporting to follow three months later, and the compliance date for the amendment to the CAT NMS Plan will be 18 months after the effective date of the adopting release.

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-221#:~:text=The%20final%20rule%2C%20Form%20SHO,release%20in%20the%20Federal%20Register.

The OFR has established a regular schedule for publication of documents in the Federal Register, with documents typically on a three- or four-day schedule for publication depending on when they are received.4 Although this timing is a helpful starting point for determining when a document will be published in the Federal Register, the submission by the SEC of the proposed or final rule to the OFR may not occur on the same date as the announcement by the SEC of a proposed or final rule. It could take several days or longer for the agency to submit the release to the OFR. In addition, the OFR may defer publication beyond the typical publication timing (discussed above) if the document has lengthy tables, illustrations, and/or the length of the document requires additional review and processing time.5

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/how-long-does-it-usually-take-for-sec-3605577


See also:

https://www.fa-mag.com/news/hedge-funds-to-get-new-sec-mandates-for-reporting-short-sales-75014.html

See also:

SEC Charges Citadel Securities for Violating Order Marking Requirements of Short Sale Regulations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
2023-192

Washington D.C., Sept. 22, 2023 —
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settled charges against broker-dealer Citadel Securities LLC for violating a provision of Regulation SHO, the regulatory framework designed to address abusive short selling practices, which requires broker-dealers to mark sale orders as long, short, or short exempt. These records are routinely used by regulators in policing prohibited short selling activity. To settle the SEC’s charges, Miami-based Citadel Securities agreed to pay a $7 million penalty.

According to the SEC’s order, for a five-year period, it is estimated that Citadel Securities incorrectly marked millions of orders, inaccurately denoting that certain short sales were long sales and vice versa. The SEC’s order finds that the inaccurate marks resulted from a coding error in Citadel Securities’s automated trading system and that the firm provided the inaccurate data to regulators, including the SEC during this period.

“Compliance with the order marking requirements of Reg SHO is a key component of regulatory efforts to curtail abusive market practices, including ‘naked’ short selling,” said Mark Cave, Associate Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “This action against Citadel Securities demonstrates that a broker-dealer’s failure to comply with the requirements of Reg SHO can have negative downstream consequences on the accuracy of the firm’s electronic records, including its electronic blue sheet reporting, depriving the Commission of important information about the markets it regulates.”

The order charges Citadel Securities with violating Rule 200(g) of Reg SHO. Without admitting or denying the findings, Citadel Securities consented to a cease-and-desist order imposing a censure, a $7 million penalty, and a set of undertakings, including a written certification that the coding error has been remediated and a review of the firm’s computer programming and coding logic involved in processing relevant transactions.

The SEC’s investigation was conducted by Seth M. Nadler of the SEC’s Home Office. Christopher Ray of the SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets; Elcin Yildirim, Alan Lenarcic, and Peter Csatorday of the SEC’s Division of Examinations; Mandy Sturmfelz of the SEC’s Market Abuse Unit; Damon Taaffe and Melissa Armstrong of the Home Office Trial Unit; and Kevin Gershfeld and Robert Nesbitt of the Enforcement Division’s Office of Investigative and Market Analytics provided assistance. The investigation was supervised by Mr. Cave.

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https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-192