Citadel Securities Asks SEC to Reconsider Proposal to Remove Order Protection Rule
Citadel Securities, a major market-making firm founded by Ken Griffin, has urged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to reconsider its proposal to eliminate the order protection rule—a key regulation that requires stock trades to be executed at the best available price. The SEC proposed removing this long-standing rule in June 2026 as part of broader efforts under Chairman Paul Atkins to reform market structure, arguing it had become outdated and costly. In a letter to the SEC, Citadel's Stephen John Berger criticized the agency’s economic analysis as 'fatally flawed,' warning that scrapping the rule could shift trading away from public exchanges, harm retail investors, reduce liquidity, and weaken price discovery. The firm also raised concerns about potential benefits for platforms offering tokenized equities at the expense of investor protections. The order protection rule was introduced in 2005 to prevent trade-throughs—executing trades at worse prices than those displayed elsewhere—and has been central to U.S. equity market structure.
Topics: Citadel Securities order protection rule SEC stock trading rules