The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association said that the first day of trading under Regulation NMS passed without any major problems for firms or the markets.

July 9 marked the start of full industry compliance with new trading rules beginning with approximately 250 National Market System stocks from the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ and the American Stock Exchange. The order protection rule, or trade-through rule, requires market centers to route orders they receive to other markets that have better prices available under certain circumstances. The “fair access rule,” mandates linkages between the markets that enable the routing of orders to other markets in compliance with the trade-through rule.

“The industry, the SEC and the exchanges have all worked extremely hard to ensure a smooth launch. We can happily report that through the first day of trading, we did not experience any major disruptions or problems – a credit to the hard working men and women who have labored to get this new system up and running,” said Ira Hammerman, SIFMA’s general counsel and senior managing director. “The new Reg NMS order protection and access rules have been a major undertaking for firms and exchanges, and their implementation is the result of several years work.”

“This should bode well for the next stage of implementation,” Hammerman added.

August 20 is the scheduled date for full implementation with all NMS stocks. SIFMA staff and representatives from the broker-dealer community, exchanges, vendors, the SEC and the Financial Information Forum have worked together for the past two years to ensure a coordinated approach to implementing Reg NMS.