The Players
This primary federal agency oversees the U.S. securities markets and enforces federal securities laws.
The Securities and Exchange Commission.
This is the oldest stock exchange in the country, formed in 1792.
What is the Philadelphia Stock Exchange?
These individuals or firms execute buy and sell orders on behalf of clients or for their own proprietary accounts.
Who are broker dealers?
This is an order to buy or sell a security immediately at the best available current price.
What is a Market Order?
This is the practice of using powerful computers to transact a large number of orders at extremely high speeds, often capitalizing on tiny price discrepancies.
What is High Frequency Trading?
This self-regulatory organization (SRO) is the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States.
FINRA
This national securities exchange began as an electronic screen-based market and is known for listing major technology and growth companies.
What is Nasdaq?
This is a market participant who stands ready to buy or sell a specific security at their quoted prices in order to maintain liquidity in the market.
What is a Market Maker?
This is an order to buy or sell a security only at a specific price or better.
What is a Limit Order?
This is the term for when trading is stopped in a certain stock.
What is a halt?
This FINRA rule requires broker-dealers to use reasonable diligence to ascertain the best market for the subject security and buy or sell in that market so that the resultant price to the customer is as favorable as possible
Best Execution
This term refers to the initial sale of stock to the public by a company.
What is an Initial Public Offering?
These are private trading venues that allow institutional investors to buy or sell large blocks of securities without publicly displaying their orders before execution.
What are dark pools or ATS’s?
This is the practice where retail brokers send customer orders to third-party high-frequency trading firms in exchange for monetary compensation.
What is Payment for Order Flow?
This is the acronym for the consolidated real-time database that tracks every single quote, order, and trade lifecycle across all U.S. equity markets to enhance regulatory oversight.
What is CAT?
Execution venues that are not exchanges.
What are Alternative Trading Systems?
This type of security is similar to a mutual fund but is traded on an exchange.
What is an Exchange Traded Fund?
These financial firms manage huge sums of money but are not registered broker dealers?
What are hedge funds?
This is the standard minimum increment for quoting most stocks priced at $1 or more, as outlined under SEC rules.
What is a penny?
This core mechanism continuously updates and displays the highest bid price and lowest ask price for a security across all public U.S. stock exchanges.
What is the National Best Bid or Offer?
This is where over the counter trades are reported.
What are Trade Reporting Facilities?
This is the exchange that Professor DeMaio traded at?
What is the American Stock Exchange?
These financial firms receive orders from retail customers.
What are Introducing Brokers?
This is the rule that requires Market Makers to display and honor a certain size transaction?
What is the Firm Quote Rule?
This is a method of improving execution quality that is not available in options.
What is an auction mechanism?