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Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request; Extension: Rule 611

Securities and Exchange Commission [OMB Control No. 3235-0600] Upon Written Request, Copies Available From: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F St...

Securities and Exchange Commission
  1. [OMB Control No. 3235-0600]

Upon Written Request, Copies Available From: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549-2736.

Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) is soliciting comments on the existing collection of information provided for Rule 611 (17 CFR 242.611) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78a et seq.) (“Exchange Act”). The Commission plans to submit this existing collection of information to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) for extension and approval.

On June 9, 2005, effective August 29, 2005 ( see70 FR 37496, June 29, 2005), the Commission adopted Rule 611 of Regulation NMS under the Exchange Act to require any national securities exchange, national securities association, alternative trading system, exchange market maker, over-the-counter market maker, and any other broker-dealer that executes orders internally by trading as principal or crossing orders as agent, to establish, maintain, and enforce written policies and procedures reasonably designed to prevent the execution of a transaction in its market at a price that is inferior to a protected bid or offer displayed in another market at the time of execution (a “trade-though”), absent an applicable exception and, if relying on an exception, that are reasonably designed to assure compliance with the terms of the exception. Without this collection of information, respondents would not have a means to enforce compliance with the Commission's intention to prevent trade-throughs pursuant to the rule.

There are approximately 305 respondents [1] per year that will require an aggregate total of approximately 18,300 hours to comply with this Rule. It is anticipated that each respondent will continue to expend approximately 60 hours annually: two hours per month of internal legal time and three hours per month of internal compliance time to ensure that its written policies and procedures are up-to-date and remain in compliance with Rule 611. The estimated cost for an attorney is $744 per hour and the estimated cost for a financial examiner in the securities industry is $365 per hour. Therefore the estimated total internal cost of compliance for the annual hour burden is as follows: [(2 legal hours × 12 months × $744) × 305] + [(3 compliance hours × 12 months × $365) × 305] = $9,453,780.[2]

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB Control Number.

Written comments are invited on: (a) whether this proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the SEC, including whether the information will have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the SEC's estimate of the burden imposed by the proposed collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and the assumptions used; (c) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, including through the use of automated, electronic collection techniques or other forms of information technology.

Please direct your written comments on this 60-Day Collection Notice to Austin Gerig, Director/Chief Data Officer, Securities and Exchange Commission, c/o Tanya Ruttenberg via email to by July 20, 2026. There will be a second opportunity to comment on this SEC request following the Federal Register publishing a 30-Day Submission Notice.

Dated: May 15, 2026.

J. Matthew DeLesDernier,

Deputy Secretary.

Footnotes

1.  The Commission estimates that there are currently 305 trading centers subject to Rule 611. This estimate includes 20 exchanges (17 exchanges that trade NMS stocks + three exchanges that are approved but not yet operating) and 33 ATSs that trade NMS stocks. Based on data from the consolidated audit trail for January 2026, the estimate also includes 96 exchange market makers and 225 broker-dealers acting as OTC market maker or executing orders internally by trading as principal or crossing orders as agent. 69 broker-dealers are both exchange market makers and an OTC market maker or broker-dealer internalizing orders. 20 + 33 + 96 + 225−69 = 305 trading centers.

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2.  To calculate the occupational hourly rates used in this release, the Commission uses occupational mean hourly wage data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for “Securities, Commodity Contracts, and Other Financial Investments and Related Activities” (NAICS 523). See Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/​oes/​; see also Standard Occupational Classification, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/​soc/​ (describing occupational classification system used by BLS); Exec. Off. of the President, Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, North American Industry Classification System (2022), available at https://www.census.gov/​naics/​reference_​files_​tools/​2022_​NAICS_​Manual.pdf (describing the industry classification system used by BLS and other agencies). The mean hourly wage for each occupation is adjusted for changes in the seasonally adjusted employment cost index for private wages and salaries between the data reference period and when the data are released by BLS. See Employment Cost Index, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/​eci/​. The adjusted mean hourly wage is then multiplied by a factor that accounts for nonwage costs borne by employers, such as bonuses, benefits, and overhead. This factor is calculated as an average over the 10 most recently available years of data of the ratio of the Bureau of Economic Analysis's annual gross output data for NAICS 523 to total annual wages across all occupations for NAICS 523 in the OEWS data. See Gross Output by Industry, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, https://www.bea.gov/​data/​industries/​gross-output-by-industry; Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/​oes/​. The final product is the occupational hourly rate. See generally Updated Methodology for Calculating Occupational Hourly Rates (Dec. 19, 2025), available at https://www.sec.gov/​files/​method-occupational-hourly-rates.pdf.

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[FR Doc. 2026-09992 Filed 5-18-26; 8:45 am]

BILLING CODE 8011-01-P

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Federal Register Citation

Use this for formal legal and research references to the published document.

91 FR 29198

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“Agency Information Collection Activities; Proposed Collection; Comment Request; Extension: Rule 611,” thefederalregister.org (May 19, 2026), https://thefederalregister.org/documents/2026-09992/agency-information-collection-activities-proposed-collection-comment-request-extension-rule-611.