:Wall Street's top regulator on Wednesday adopted rules tightening the time-frame for stock trades in an effort to tamp down the kind of risk seen in 2021's GameStop fiasco, when retail investors suffered heavy losses.
Trade groups have broadly welcomed the commission's proposal to cut the so-called settlement cycle to a single business day from two, six years after an earlier SEC rule shortened the period from three days. Republican Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda voted against the move, citing the insufficient transition period.
GameStop's share price tanked after its earlier volatility resulted in a multi-billion-dollar margin call on trading platform operators such as Robinhood Markets Inc. Robinhood and others responded by blocking users from buying the stock. Advisers need to hold investors’ assets with a firm deemed to be a"qualified custodian.” SEC enforcement staff have been probing registered investment advisors over whether they are meeting those existing rules when it comes to clients' digital assets, Reuters has previously reported.