The Securities and Exchange Commission has solicited the views of exchanges, broker-dealers and investors on a range of questions related to market data since at least 1999 when it published SEC Concept Release: Regulation of Market Information Fees and Revenues (Market Data Concept Release). The robust discussion at the SEC’s October 25-26, 2018 Roundtable on Market Data and Market Access (Roundtable) made it clear that many of the issues raised in the Concept Release have not been resolved, and in some cases have been exacerbated by electronic trading and the adoption of Regulation NMS.

The SEC’s Division of Trading and Markets hosted the Roundtable following April 2016 recommendations by the SEC’s Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee (EMSAC) for a Framework for Potential Access Fee Pilot and the U.S. Treasury Department’s October 2017 report on A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities: Capital Markets, which recommended (among other things) that the SEC, when approving rule changes of self-regulatory organizations (SROs) related to market data, “determine whether the fees charged by an exclusive processor for market information are ‘fair and reasonable,’ ‘not unreasonably discriminatory,’ and an ‘equitable allocation’ of reasonable fees among persons who use the data.” Further, Treasury also recommended that the SEC consider amendments to Regulation NMS to permit competing market data consolidators to purchase exchanges’ proprietary market data feeds (including last sale and depth of book), on a non-discriminatory basis, in order to provide faster and broader market data as a lower cost alternative to exchanges’ securities information processors (SIPs).

No specific rule amendments or proposals were discussed during the Roundtable. Rather, as described below, the panelists discussed a number of central themes and issues that are regularly raised with respect to market data fees and costs – most recently, in securities industry challenges to exchange market data fees.