• NOTICE OF DISCIPLINARY ACTION

      • #
      • NYMEX 22-1591-BC
      • Effective Date
      • 17 November 2023
    • MEMBER:

      WEDBUSH SECURITIES, INC.

      NYMEX RULES:

      432. General Offenses (In Part)

      It shall be an offense:

      L.3. to fail to produce any books or records requested by duly authorized Exchange staff, in the format and medium specified in the request, within 10 days after such request is made or such shorter period of time as determined by the Market Regulation Department in exigent circumstances.

      561. Submission of Large Trader Positions and Volume Threshold Accounts (In Part)

      561.A. Large Trader Reporting

      Clearing members, omnibus accounts and foreign brokers shall electronically submit to the Exchange a daily large trader position report of all positions required to be reported as set forth in the Position Limit, Position Accountability and Reportable Level Table, in the Interpretations Section at the end of Chapter 5. Positions at or above the reportable level in a particular expiration month of a futures contract, or in all puts or in all calls of a particular option contract expiration month, are required to be reported. For an account with reportable positions in a particular contract, all positions, regardless of size, in any contract month and in any contract that aggregates with that contract must be reported.

      811. Position Change Data

      Position change data must be submitted to the Clearing House each trading day not later than the time specified by the Clearing House. Position change data will be in such form and contain such information as prescribed by the Clearing House. When requested, the identification of accounts will be made available to the Financial and Regulatory Surveillance Department.

      FINDINGS:

      Pursuant to an offer of settlement, in which Wedbush Securities Inc. neither admitted or denied the Rule violations or factual findings upon which the penalty is based, on November 15, 2023, a Panel of the NYMEX Business Conduct Committee (“Panel”) found that on February 24, 2022, Wedbush’s back-office accounting platform failed to maintain records of cleared trades after its settlement platform reached an upper limit of traded contracts due to extremely high trading volume. As a result, from that date through March 2022, Wedbush: (1) submitted inaccurate large trader position reports to the Exchange; and (2) failed to submit position change data to the Clearing House in a timely manner.

      These inaccurate and untimely reports included positions in various contract months of WTI Average Price option on Light Sweet Crude Oil futures, Brent Last Day Financial futures, Light Sweet Crude Oil futures and options on futures, WTI Financial futures, Chicago Ethanol (Platts) Average Price options, Henry Hub Natural Gas Look-Alike Last-Day Financial futures, NY Harbor ULSD futures, Henry Hub Natural Gas European Financial options, Light Sweet Crude Oil weekly options, Micro WTI Crude Oil futures, Henry Hub Natural Gas futures, Palladium futures, Platinum futures, and RBOB Gasoline futures.

      The Panel also found that on multiple occasions from March 2022 to April 2022, Wedbush failed to respond to requests from duly authorized Exchange staff for information pertaining to position data in a timely manner.

      The Panel found that as a result of the foregoing, Wedbush violated NYMEX Rules 561, 811, and 432.L.3.

      PENALTY:

      Based on the record and the Panel’s findings and conclusions, the Panel ordered Wedbush to pay a fine in the amount of $175,000 in connection with this case and companion cases CBOT 22-1591-BC, COMEX 22-1591-BC, and CME 22- 1591-BC ($30,000 allocated to NYMEX).