SRO Monitor Digest

The options exchanges and FINRA maintain a long-standing 17d-2 agreement that assigns options-related sales practice examinations of dually-registered broker-dealers to a single 'Designated Options Examining Authority' (usually FINRA) so firms aren't examined multiple times for the same conduct. This amendment adds IEX and MX2 (MIAX's new options venue) as plan participants and renames Nasdaq BX to Nasdaq Texas. The SEC both noticed and immediately approved/declared the amendment effective — it is a routine, non-controversial administrative step, so nothing changes for trading; it simply confirms FINRA will handle options sales-practice oversight of IEX Options and MX2 members rather than the exchanges duplicating that work.

MEMX wants to list 'securities event contracts' on its options platform — binary, all-or-nothing yes/no contracts that pay $1 based on whether a company's reported earnings, revenue, sales or other SEC-filed financial metric hits a threshold, essentially bringing CFTC-style prediction markets into the securities regulatory perimeter. This follows a nearly identical Cboe 'binary KPI options' filing, and MEMX deliberately designs its version differently (yes/no paired bids summing to $1, no short selling, no obvious-error process, flexible strike selection). The SEC has only published the proposal for comment — nothing is approved yet; the Commission has 45–90 days to approve, extend, or open disapproval proceedings, and given the novelty (are these options or security-based swaps?) and insider-trading concerns around earnings-based contracts, a longer review is likely. Nothing changes for market participants today, and MEMX cannot list the product until a clearing agency is ready and disclosure documents are in place.

NYSE American (Rule 7.18E) and NYSE Texas (Rule 7.18) each extended their reverse-stock-split halt framework to cover nine categories of corporate actions \u2014 symbol/CUSIP changes, splits, large dividends, de-SPACs, spin-offs, security-type changes, mergers and a catch-all \u2014 halting affected listed securities before 9:00 p.m. ET and reopening them via a Trading Halt Auction at 8:00 a.m. ET. The rationale is identical: once 23/5 trading begins, only a one-hour gap separates sessions, leaving no overnight window to process corporate-action reference data (NYSE Texas also moves its existing reverse-split reopen from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m.). Both filings took effect immediately under the non-controversial 19b-4(f)(6) route with a 60-day SEC suspension window, and follow NYSE Arca's earlier filing, with Nasdaq and other primary listing markets expected to adopt identical rules.

IEX is fine-tuning the risk-control toolkit for its soon-to-launch options facility (IEX Options is slated to begin trading October 2, 2026), adding a Priority Customer Multiplier that lets market makers count retail-customer executions at reduced weight, permitting intraday changes to risk settings, standardizing breach handling to a single 'cancel and block' action, allowing automated reinstatement after a global risk breach, and limiting kill switches to the MPID level. Because each feature mirrors functionality already approved at Cboe, NYSE Arca, MIAX Pearl, BOX and MEMX, IEX filed it as 'non-controversial' under Rule 19b-4(f)(6), meaning it took effect immediately without SEC pre-approval; the SEC retains a 60-day window to suspend it, but that is unlikely for copycat risk-control functionality. Practically, IEX Options market makers get more flexible, industry-standard risk management at launch, which should encourage tighter quoting and more liquidity on the new venue.

Nasdaq is filling in operational details for the overnight 'Night Session' (9:00 p.m.–4:00 a.m. ET) that the SEC approved in April 2026, specifying that during those hours it will rely solely on the consolidated SIP quote feeds (CQS/UQDF) rather than the mix of proprietary and SIP feeds it uses during the day — mainly to avoid re-engineering timestamp handling in its proprietary feed handlers. The filing took effect immediately on submission under the non-controversial 19b-4(f)(6) route, so no SEC approval is needed; the SEC could still suspend it within 60 days but that is unlikely for a housekeeping-style data-source disclosure. Practically, nothing changes today because the Night Session can't launch until the SIPs are ready to disseminate overnight data, but it signals Nasdaq is actively building toward 23/5 trading and that overnight order handling/routing will be driven off consolidated data.