Citadel Securities fined $7M for mismarked short, long sales

Miami-based broker-dealer Citadel Securities was fined $7 million as part of a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) addressing mismarked short and long sales caused by a coding error in the firm’s automated trading system.

Citadel violated Regulation SHO by providing inaccurate data to regulators, including the SEC, over a five-year period, the agency said in a press release Friday. The settlement requires Citadel to provide written certification regarding remediation of the coding error and a review of the firm’s computer programming and coding logic.

From September 2015 through September 2020, Citadel inadvertently marked certain short sale orders as long sales and vice versa while handling orders on behalf of its broker-dealer clients, resulting in an estimated millions of sell orders being mismarked, the SEC alleged in its order.

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