The Trade-Through Rule and Locked and Crossed Markets Provisions of Regulation NMS

ept. 17, 2025) (``IntelligentCross Letter'') at 3-4; Kelvin To, Founder and President, Data Boiler Technologies, Can Order Protection be replaced by Competing Market Forces? (Sept. 8, 2025) (``Data Boiler Comment'') at 1, 4; letter from John A. Zecca, Executive Vice President, Global Chief Legal, Risk & Regulatory Officer, Nasdaq (Sept. 24, 2025) (``Nasdaq Letter I'') at 1-2. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In particular, some commenters questioned whether the trade-through rule is at least partly to blame for the substantial increase in the number of exchanges and excessive fragmentation of liquidity among trading venues.\53\ Some commenters contended that, by requiring market participants to consider the protected quotations of all exchanges and to route orders to execute against those quotations in certain contexts, Rule 611 enables more exchanges to stay in business than may have otherwise been the case.\54\ Similarly, some commenters argued that the proliferation of exchanges increases costs and complexity for market participants by, for example, requiring them to connect to each exchange, directly or indirectly, and to pay for and monitor market data from each exchange, regardless of such venue's utility.\55\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \53\ See, e.g., Robinhood Letter at 3-5; lett