Securities and Exchange Commission February 20, 2019 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the ``Commission'') is publishing this notice pursuant to the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (the ``2015 Act''). This Act requires all agencies to annually adjust for inflation the civil monetary penalties that can be imposed under the statutes administered by the agency and publish the adjusted amounts in the Federal Register. This notice sets forth the annual inflation adjustment of the maximum amount of civil monetary penalties (``CMPs'') administered by the Commission under the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the ``Exchange Act''), the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and certain penalties under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. These amounts are effective beginning on January 15, 2019, and will apply to all penalties imposed after that date for violations of the aforementioned statutes that occurred after November 2, 2015.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (``Commission'' or ``SEC'') is adopting a new rule of Regulation National Market System (``Regulation NMS'') under the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 (``Exchange Act'') to conduct a Transaction Fee Pilot (``Pilot'') for National Market System (``NMS'') stocks to study the effects that exchange transaction fee-and-rebate pricing models may have on order routing behavior, execution quality, and market quality. We expect the data generated by the pilot, combined with data from existing sources, will facilitate an empirical evaluation of whether the existing exchange transaction-based fee and rebate structure is operating effectively to further statutory goals.