Lessons Learned
Payment for Order Flow Gets Another Broker into Hot Water for Undisclosed Conflicts. The SEC found Lightspeed Trading, LLC (“Lightspeed”), formerly a registered broker-dealer, guilty of securities fraud for lying to customers and profiting from lower “market center fees” charged by its affiliate for executing trades. In 2012, Lightspeed started offering customers access to an equity trading platform that allowed them to select the exchange or trading venue for executing their orders. Unfortunately, that freedom of choice was an illusion. Lightspeed actually sent many trades to its affiliated Routing Broker, which charged Lightspeed less for the trades than the venues the customers had selected. Lightspeed charged the fees those venues advertised and kept the difference, to the tune of $300,000 over a period of seven months. The SEC required Lightspeed to repay its clients, but the firm pleaded poverty and got $100,000 of its penalty waived.