Mutual funds are intended to be mom-and-pop financial products whose investments can be sold off quickly. The funds were never meant to pile into markets where trades take weeks to complete. Some mutual funds, however, have lately been making bets that might be hard to get out of, especially in difficult market conditions. The stampede into investments that can be difficult to exit has regulators increasingly concerned. On Thursday, Mary Jo White, the chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, told a conference organized by The New York Times/DealBook that the agency was undertaking a comprehensive review of the mutual fund sector. One of the review’s major objectives is to assess whether some mutual funds are loading up on investments that would take too long to unwind. More in the New York Times [...]

Just as the industry awaits clarity from Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White on where she stands regarding a uniform fiduciary rule for brokers and advisors, SEC Commissioner Kara Stein said Thursday that the Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance is “spearheading a very important project examining the effectiveness of disclosures.” Indeed, both Stein and SEC Commissioner Michael Piwowar have both recently espoused the benefits of “investor testing” as a means to help the agency better disclose broker and advisor standards of care. More on ThinkAdvisor [...]

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairwoman Mary Jo White reiterated Thursday that the agency is taking a “comprehensive review” of potential changes to the accredited investor definition, but SEC Commissioner Daniel Gallagher said such an endeavor “strains logic and reason,” and that “millionaires can fend for themselves.” Both White and Gallagher made their remarks during the Government-Business Forum on Small Business Capital Formation, held at SEC headquarters in Washington. The forum delved into whether changes need to be made to the accredited investor definition as it relates to natural persons. White stated that the SEC’s goal is to “assess whether we are properly identifying the population of investors who should be able to purchase securities in a securities offering without the protection afforded by the registration requirements of the Securities Act.” More on Think Advisor [...]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission experienced a banner year with its whistleblower program in fiscal 2014, awarding more tipsters than all previous years combined and issuing a record-setting $30 million to one individual who reported fraud. The SEC said in a report to Congress this week that it authorized a total of nine monetary awards this year to people who provided original information about violations of federal securities laws. The agency had previously handed out a combined four awards since the program began in 2011. More in the Washington Post [...]

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Despite concerns of some commissioners that a rule doesn’t go far enough, the Securities Exchange Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously in favor of regulations designed to ensure the technology at stock exchanges works. The Commission voted to adopt rules on Regulation Systems Compliance and Integrity, which requires self-regulatory organizations, securities exchanges, registered clearing agencies and significant alternative trading systems, to establish policies and procedures to help ensure that systems have capacity, integrity and resiliency. SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White said the adoption of the rule was put in place because the commission could not exercise oversight with a purely voluntary framework. More on Market Watch [...]

Two Republican members of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission lambasted plans to compensate victims of an insider trading scandal at a unit of the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisers, calling it nothing more than a windfall for class-action lawyers. In an unusual move, SEC Commissioners Daniel Gallagher and Michael Piwowar announced their dissent for the $602 million fund in an op-ed item in the Wall Street Journal posted late Monday evening that appeared in Tuesday’s print edition. (on.wsj.com/1wga7Oa) Typically, such opinions are posted directly on the SEC’s website, or in some cases, not widely publicized. More on Reuters [...]

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White is poised to reveal what she believes is the best way for the agency to address the issue of raising investment-advice standards for brokers. “The commission has not made a decision whether to do something or what to do,” Ms. White said Monday at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association annual meeting in New York. “But in the short-term, there will be more clarity on that in terms of my own position.” Ms. White has not said whether she supports writing a rule or enhancing disclosures related to investment-advice standard of care. She has played her cards close to her vest in part because the controversial issue has divided the five-member commission. More on Investment News [...]

Major U.S. stock exchanges have asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing them of costing ordinary investors billions of dollars by rigging markets to benefit high-frequency traders. Exchanges including Nasdaq, Intercontinental Exchange Inc’s New York Stock Exchange, Bats Global Markets and CHX Holdings Inc’s Chicago Stock Exchange said they deserve “absolute immunity” because they regulate themselves, and that only the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could review the plaintiffs’ claims. More on Reuters [...]

WASHINGTON—A time lag that could give some investors early access to market-moving documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission has all but disappeared, according to an academic tracking the data. Delays between the time a private data feed publishes regulatory filings to the SEC and when the filings appear on the agency’s website have diminished since Wednesday afternoon, said Prof. Robert Jackson of Columbia Law School. The shift came after The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that some sophisticated investors were gaining access to documents ahead of others. The early look gave them a potential advantage over investors relying on the public website, according to findings by Mr. Jackson as well as a separate group of academics studying the same topic. More in the Wall Street Journal [...]

Two decades ago, a system for sending U.S. corporate filings over the Internet was hailed as a victory for transparency. Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Edgar website is engulfed by concern over opacity. Researchers checking whether documents are distributed to investors fairly by the SEC found evidence that some paying subscribers got the information first. The commission is reviewing how data is disseminated by the service, which was activated during the Clinton administration as a way to broaden access to potentially market-moving data, a spokesman said. This is what happens when a technology designed to solve problems in the 1990s becomes the focus of scrutiny so many years later, said Manoj Narang, the chief executive officer of proprietary trader Tradeworx Inc. Thanks to high-frequency trading, every detail of how data is broadcast to U.S. markets is being reviewed in probes by the New York attorney general, the FBI and the SEC itself. More on Bloomberg [...]