What “Worse Prices” Actually Means for Ordinary People

The phrase “trade-through” is regulatory language designed to be forgettable. Strip the jargon away and here is what it means: you were sold a stock for more than the cheapest available price, or you sold a stock for less than the highest available price. The difference went somewhere. It did not evaporate. Someone, somewhere, got a better deal than you did, and the rules that exist specifically to prevent that from happening were not followed.

Regulation NMS, the rulebook at the center of this case, exists for one reason: to make sure that when you place a trade, the financial firm handling it has to find you the best available price in the market. That protection is not a courtesy. It is federal law. It was written after Congress and the SEC spent years watching broker-dealers route trades in ways that benefited the broker far more than the client.

Wall Street Access handled what the settlement document calls “large, not-held orders from broker-dealers.” These are big blocks of stock, the kind moved by institutions, pension funds, and asset managers. The people whose retirement savings, university endowments, or public employee pension pools sit inside those institutional accounts are at the end of this chain. They are not named in this document. They will never know their trades were affected. That invisibility is part of what makes this category of violation so persistent: there is no individual victim to complain, no single person who gets a letter saying their order was mishandled. The harm diffuses across thousands of transactions and disappears into the noise.

The failure was not a split-second glitch. It was a structural rot. The firm’s own compliance reports were reviewed once a month. That is the equivalent of checking your smoke alarm batteries once a year and calling it a fire safety system. When the system that was supposed to send protective orders to a trading venue started failing in October 2019, the firm did not find out until December 2019. When the fix they applied created a brand-new problem, they did not find out until a FINRA investigator called them in May 2020. And when a third problem started in October 2020, they found it in November, fixed it for one account in December, and let the other account keep running bad trades until April 2021.

Five months. The firm discovered a live, ongoing violation and continued executing trades under the broken system for five more months. That is not a clerical error. That is a choice about what to prioritize, and the answer was: not the people on the other side of those trades.

FINRA had already knocked on this door in May 2018. The firm responded by updating its written procedures. But writing down a rule and actually enforcing it are two different things. The firm’s report was still being reviewed monthly, not daily, when the violations started 17 months later. The paperwork looked better. The conduct did not change. This is a pattern that repeats across financial enforcement: the firm produces a document that says the right words, regulators check a box, and the underlying behavior continues until the next surveillance sweep catches it.

They Signed It. Here’s What the Document Actually Says.

The following quotes come directly from FINRA AWC No. 2020066754701, signed by Wall Street Access on December 16, 2024. The firm accepted these findings without admitting or denying them, which is standard settlement language. That does not change what the document describes.

“Between October 2019 and April 2021, WABR experienced three separate systems issues with the OMS that the firm used to send ISOs, which resulted in approximately 1,900 trade-throughs.” AWC No. 2020066754701, Facts and Violative Conduct, p. 3

• Three separate, distinct systems failures over 18 months. This was not one bug that took time to fix. These were three independent breakdowns, each one producing a new wave of illegal trades.
• The number 1,900 is described as “approximately,” meaning the actual count could be higher. The settlement document does not provide a precise figure.

“Although the firm detected this issue in November 2020, it was not resolved as to one of its market participant identifiers (MPID) until December 2020 and as to its other MPID until April 2021. Nevertheless, WABR continued to use ISOs for both of its MPIDs and to avail itself of the Outbound ISO Exception for approximately five months after it discovered that those ISOs did not comply with the Outbound ISO Exception.” AWC No. 2020066754701, Facts and Violative Conduct, p. 4–5

• The firm knew its trades did not comply with the rules and continued making them for five months. This is the most damaging sentence in the document. It converts a “systems failure” narrative into a knowing, ongoing violation.
• The firm had two separate market participant identifiers (MPIDs), essentially two operational identities on the exchange. One was fixed by December 2020. The other kept running non-compliant trades until April 9, 2021.
• During those five months, WABR sent 1,248 ISOs that were not routed to Venue B or Venue C, causing approximately 430 additional trade-throughs the firm could have stopped.

“After receiving a warning from FINRA in May 2018, the firm revised its WSPs and processes to require the responsible principal to review its Reg NMS ISO Orders Report… However, the firm only reviewed the report at month’s end.” AWC No. 2020066754701, Facts and Violative Conduct, p. 4

• A warning in 2018 produced a paper fix, not a real one. The firm updated its written supervisory procedures but implemented a monthly review cycle when the risks of their business required daily monitoring.
• Because the report was only reviewed monthly, the October 2019 ISO rejection problem at Venue A ran for two full months before anyone at the firm noticed. That gap produced 170 illegal trades.
• The report itself had a structural flaw: it showed whether ISOs were sent, but did not confirm whether they were received and executed correctly at the destination venue. The firm was checking the wrong thing.

“It did not detect the destination code issue until it received an inquiry from FINRA in May 2020.” AWC No. 2020066754701, Facts and Violative Conduct, p. 4

• The second major failure, which caused approximately 1,300 trade-throughs, was only discovered because FINRA contacted the firm. The firm’s own internal systems did not catch it at all.
• The OMS provider had already resolved the issue in March 2020, meaning the fix happened before FINRA even called. The firm was executing bad trades during a period when the underlying technical problem had already been quietly corrected, without the firm ever knowing it had occurred.

Who Actually Pays When the Rules Break Down

Public Health of Markets: Investor Protection Undermined

Reg NMS trade-through protections exist to guarantee price fairness for every participant in U.S. equity markets. When those protections fail at scale, the damage ripples outward from institutional clients to the retail investors and pension beneficiaries behind them.

• Approximately 1,900 trades were executed at prices that violated federal best-execution protections. Each trade-through represents a specific instance where an investor on one side of that transaction received a materially worse price than the market required by law.
• WABR handles “large, not-held orders from broker-dealers.” The downstream clients behind those orders include institutional money managers whose funds hold assets on behalf of pension beneficiaries, university endowments, and public-sector employees. Those individuals never consent to having their trades mishandled.
• The firm’s monitoring failure was structural, not accidental. A monthly report review schedule on a trading operation where violations could accumulate by the hundreds within a single month means the supervisory system was not capable of detecting harm in time to stop it.
• FINRA conducted the surveillance that discovered these violations, not the firm itself. Without regulatory surveillance, the second failure period (December 2019 to March 2020) would never have come to light. The firm’s own internal controls produced zero alerts.

Economic Inequality: Who Absorbs This Fine

The $125,000 penalty is the primary economic consequence WABR faces for 18 months of violations. The distribution of that cost and the scale of the penalty relative to the misconduct are both worth examining closely.

• $125,000 total, of which only $24,563.18 goes to FINRA. The remainder is split among eight exchanges: Cboe BYX, Cboe BZX, Cboe EDGA, Cboe EDGX, Investors Exchange, New York Stock Exchange LLC, NYSE Arca, and NYSE American. These are the market centers whose protected quotes were violated.
• At roughly $66 per illegal trade, the fine is a cost of doing business, not a deterrent. A firm with nine branch offices and approximately 40 registered representatives operates in a world where this fine is a line item, not a crisis.
• The investors who received worse-than-required prices are not compensated under this settlement. The AWC imposes a fine and a censure. It does not include restitution to any harmed party, because the individual-level harm is too diffuse to quantify and attribute under the settlement structure.
• The firm waived its right to a formal hearing, a written complaint, and the right to appeal. That means no full public airing of the evidence, no adversarial proceeding, and no precedent-setting decision. The AWC process is designed for efficiency; it produces resolution without accountability theater, and also without full transparency.
• WABR may not publicly deny the findings, per the terms of the AWC. But it also did not formally admit them. The settlement exists in a legal limbo that gives regulators a resolved case and the firm a liability-limiting exit.

The Math Behind the Penalty

For context: Foley & Lardner LLP, the law firm that represented Wall Street Access in this settlement, bills at rates that would make $125,000 look like a retainer payment for a mid-sized dispute. The fine does not represent a disproportionate cost to a firm with nine branch offices and 40 registered representatives. It represents the known, quantifiable cost of getting caught. That is a materially different thing.

The People Responsible and Where to Apply Pressure

Wall Street Access operates under the oversight of multiple regulators. The AWC identifies the following individual by name in connection with this settlement:

• Greg Viscovich, Chief Compliance Officer signed the AWC on behalf of Wall Street Access on December 16, 2024. The CCO role is specifically responsible for the supervisory systems and written procedures that failed in this case.
• Jennifer Cullinane, Counsel, FINRA Department of Enforcement, Boston accepted the settlement on behalf of FINRA. The settlement became effective January 16, 2025.
• Ellen M. Wheeler, Esq., Foley & Lardner LLP served as counsel for Wall Street Access. The firm’s offices are at 321 N Clark St., Suite 3000, Chicago, IL 60654.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction

• FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority): The primary regulator in this case. FINRA’s BrokerCheck tool at finra.org/brokercheck is public and contains Wall Street Access’s full disciplinary history, including this AWC once posted.
• SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission): Regulation NMS is an SEC rule. The SEC has independent authority to pursue enforcement actions for Reg NMS violations and can act in addition to, or separately from, FINRA.
• The Eight Exchanges Named in the Fine: Cboe BYX, Cboe BZX, Cboe EDGA, Cboe EDGX, Investors Exchange, NYSE, NYSE Arca, and NYSE American each received a portion of the fine. Each has its own market surveillance function and can refer additional violations independently.
• DOJ (Department of Justice): In cases where trade-throughs or market manipulation rise to the level of securities fraud, the DOJ has prosecutorial authority. This settlement does not reach that threshold, but the DOJ remains a relevant body for pattern conduct.

Mutual Aid, Local Organizing, and Grassroots Resistance

• Use FINRA BrokerCheck before placing any order through a broker-dealer. The tool is free, publicly accessible, and shows the complete disciplinary and complaint history for every registered firm and individual broker in the U.S. Wall Street Access’s CRD No. is 10012.
• If you are a union member or public employee whose pension is managed by an institutional asset manager, ask your union’s pension trustees whether they have reviewed the execution quality of broker-dealers handling your fund’s trades. Pension trustees have a fiduciary duty to ask these questions.
• File a complaint with FINRA or the SEC if you believe your broker has executed trades at prices worse than the displayed market. Both agencies have online complaint portals. Complaints from retail investors directly inform surveillance priorities.
• Support organizations pushing for stronger market structure enforcement, including investor advocacy groups that track Reg NMS compliance and push for higher penalties tied to trading volume and firm revenue rather than flat fines.
• Share this document. The AWC is a public record. The fact that 1,900 illegal trades produced a $66-per-trade fine should be part of any conversation about whether financial regulators are actually protecting ordinary people.