FINRA Rule 6460, Display of Customer Limit Orders,

FINRA Rule 6460, Display of Customer Limit Orders,


May 9, 2011 – NEW YORK – FINRA Rule 6460, Display of Customer Limit Orders, became effective today. This marks the first time that mandatory limit order display, originally implemented for exchange-listed stocks in 1997, will be extended to the OTC marketplace. The limit order display rule requires OTC market makers to display the price and size of any customer limit order that improves the price or size of their own published quote.


Prior to this change, many OTC market makers displayed the best price of customer limit orders as a result of the strong competition between broker-dealers. The limit order display rule will likely not lead to drastic changes in quote prices, although it will affect published quote sizes, since many firms previously displayed quote sizes only up to the minimum quote size tier.


Limit order display is the most recent in a series of new rules in the OTC marketplace that have long applied only to the listed markets. These new rules, most of which became effective during the first half of 2011, govern locked and crossed markets, allow access fees to be included in published quotes, and restrict sub-penny quoting.


To learn more about FINRA's limit order display policies, visit FINRA's website here: www.finra.org/web/groups/industry/@ip/@reg/@notice/documents/notices/p122114.pdf.


To learn more about the 2011 FINRA changes affecting the OTC marketplace, please view OTC Markets Group’s Compliance Alert: FINRA Rule Changes.