Market Structure

Three Principles for Thriving Public Markets

Oscar Wilde once wrote that “Everything popular is wrong.” He was describing our natural tendency to find comfort with well-established people and widespread ideas. Regulators, faced with the opportunity to open markets to alternative choices, hear a chorus of respected voices resistant to change. The SEC took until the year 2000 to repeal Rule 390—the rule that gave the New York Stock Exchange a monopoly in trading Blue Chip securities. The principles of open, transparent and connected public markets prevailed.

We raise this as the old idea underlying Rule 390, centralization of trading, is now being pushed as a popular fix for small company liquidity and capital formation. Of course, individual traders are determined to make trades in many different places, which means government intervention would be required to force stock trading back onto the largest stock exchanges[1]. Rent-seeking regulations are often cloaked in the language of “reform” and the public good.

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May 14, 2019 0

OTC Markets Group Introduces its Small Cap Listed Compliance Product

The small-cap equity market, which operates across listed and OTC venues, plays a vital role in the U.S. capital markets and economy. Companies gain access to capital and investors are able to take a stake in venture stage firms. Even though small-cap equities trade both over-the-counter and on the national exchanges, there is a perception that an exchange listing provides an air of legitimacy on a company. However, the truth is that investors and market professionals benefit from added due diligence when assessing and trading all small-cap stocks.

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January 28, 2019 0

Understanding Short Sale Activity

Quality data is essential to well-functioning markets. Improving the availability, relevance and usefulness of data aligns with OTC Market Group’s mission to create better informed, more efficient financial markets. In our experience, short selling remains one of the most highly-debated topics among academics, companies, investors, market makers and broker-dealers. As a market operator and company CEO, I believe it’s critical to address the misconceptions that still exist around short sale data and the correlation to a stock’s fundamental value.

Short selling, the sale of a security that the seller does not own, has long been a controversial practice in public markets. Advocates for short selling believe it builds price efficiency, enhances liquidity and helps improve the public markets, while critics are concerned that it can facilitate illegal market manipulation and is detrimental to investors and public companies. Given the diverse range of opinions and opposing views, we believe the first step is to take a deeper dive into the data and help separate out the noise.

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November 13, 2018 4

Cromwell Coulson’s Fireside Chat with Bob Pisani

Cromwell Coulson’s Lifetime Achievement Award and Dedication to STANY

April 19, 2018

The Security Traders Association of New York (STANY) honored OTC Markets Group CEO Cromwell Coulson with its 5th Annual Award for Lifetime Achievement and Dedication to STANY at its 82nd annual conference. Cromwell joined CNBC’s Bob Pisani for a Fireside Chat to talk about the evolution of OTC Markets Group and the contributions of industry professionals that have leveraged their knowledge for the benefit of both the trading community and investors.

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May 23, 2018 0

Understanding Blue Sky Laws

The OTC equity market operates within a unique, often complex regulatory environment. While much of the securities industry focuses solely on federal laws and regulation, the companies, broker-dealers, investors and others comprising the OTC market must understand the impact of state “Blue Sky” laws as well. Continue reading “Understanding Blue Sky Laws” →

February 12, 2018 1

Set out on a journey and make your mark… OTCQX Blue Sky Recognition Expands to 25 States

The Recognition Continues to Grow

Utah recently became the 25th state to recognize the OTCQX Best Market under its “Blue Sky Manual Exemption” for secondary trading. Just one year after Vermont first recognized OTCQX, reaching half of the 50 states marks a pivotal milestone in our quest to achieve national Blue Sky recognition. The addition of Utah followed recent recognitions from Delaware, West Virginia, Indiana and Maine. Continue reading “Set out on a journey and make your mark… OTCQX Blue Sky Recognition Expands to 25 States” →

July 12, 2017 0

Leveraging the High Demand of Community Bank Stocks

The OTCQX Banks Index, a benchmark for community banks traded on the OTCQX market, gained 30 percent in the past 12 months, compared to 15 percent for the S&P 500. How can community banks leverage this positive trend and deliver greater value to their shareholders? Continue reading “Leveraging the High Demand of Community Bank Stocks” →

June 6, 2017 0

How Can We Take the Pain Out of Being Public? Part II

In a previous blog post, I talked about some of the “pains” associated with a being an exchange-listed company today. Not only does it cost $2.5 million to do an IPO onto a U.S. exchange, it costs on average $1.5 million per year in legal, accounting, advisory and compliance costs to maintain an exchange listing, according to a 2011 study by the IPO Task Force. Continue reading “How Can We Take the Pain Out of Being Public? Part II” →

April 11, 2017 1

Let Public Companies Sell Shares in the Public Markets

If we want growing companies to go public, we need our public markets to be a competitive source of growth capital. One easy solution is to let public companies sell their shares in the same way they can now buy them back: through brokers directly into their established public markets. Removing the outdated restrictions on selling shares publicly will lower the cost of capital and attract more growth companies to our markets.

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April 3, 2017 0