Posted by olandug on another board. In general, an improvement, but still not tough enough IMO.

Is everyone familiar with the new FINRA RULES:

There’s 3 new laws gaining attention in the NSS market reform arena: FINRA 4320 goes into effect on 2/28/11. It mandates 13 day buy-ins for open delivery failures FINALLY applying to shares of non-reporting corporations. FINRA 2010-043, also starting on 2/28/11 reinstates the “short sale exempt” (SSE) marking requirements for trade reporting and the OATS system. Those MMs accessing the bona fide MM exemption from executing pre-borrows or “locates” before admittedly naked short sales must now FORMALLY acknowledge the accessing of that universally-abused exemption. Being that these trades are theoretically being made to “inject liquidity” then the excuse to hide the related trade data from the public’s eyes goes out the window. You can’t have it both ways and claim the bona fide MM exemption and later claim that the related trade data needs to be kept secret because it might reveal a “proprietary trading strategy”.

Truly bona fide MMs that are able to legally access that universally-abused exemption cover their naked short position on the next downtick after their short sale when buy side liquidity is in need of being ejected as share prices fall. The 3rd new rule which is in effect now states that the offers and bids that MMs post must be of approximately the same size. No longer can the offers be of 1 million shares and the offsetting bid good for the minimum 5,000 shares.

The verbiage in 4320 is especially well done as it FINALLY puts the clearing firms that aid and abet this crime wave on the spot. With the FFETF, which is made up of 25 different agencies, now on the scene the transparency has increased markedly. You can imagine how critical the lack of transparency is to a crime involving selling nonexistent securities and then refusing to ever deliver that which you sold AFTER being allowed access to the funds of the investor being defrauded.


Here are the links to the rules SR-FINRA-2010-028 and SR-FINRA-2010-043:
www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/RuleFilings/2010/P121522

Notice the part I marked in bold in the quote above:
"FINRA 4320 goes into effect on 2/28/11. It mandates 13 day buy-ins for open delivery failures FINALLY applying to shares of non-reporting corporations."
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http://www.finra.org/Industry/Regulation/RuleFilings/2010/P121892?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FINRARuleFilings+(FINRA+Rule+Filings)



The condensed explanation above is from Dr. Jim Decosta (if you google his name, you'll see he's deeply involved in many things about NSS in general)