Statement at Open Meeting on NMS Stock Alternative Trading Systems

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know it has been a long road to get to this meeting. I thank the staff, particularly Tyler [Raimo], for your persistence, even to the point of skipping a vacation.

Regulation ATS, which was adopted twenty years ago, opened the door to tremendous innovation in trading. As the number and importance of ATSs have grown, so too have questions about how they work. Many of these questions are answered through voluntary disclosure by ATSs. What we are doing today should help to standardize ATS disclosure, which, in turn, will facilitate better decision-making about where to send orders. Accordingly, I am generally supportive of the final rule.

I am particularly pleased about what today’s rulemaking is not. It is not a tool for us to engage in merit regulation of ATSs—the kind of regulation that has the effect of squelching innovation. Rather, this rule is a disclosure rule. We will not be dictating the operations of ATSs, but only requiring the disclosure of how they operate.

I am keeping my statement brief in the desperate hope that it will serve as a model for future rulemaking releases. The length of this release is a symptom of a pervasive verbosity problem at the SEC, which demands our attention. Based on discussions throughout this rulemaking process, I am confident that all of us will work together to address this problem. Thank you.